


11 




STUART S FIRST PORTRAIT OF WASHINGTON 

[From the original, painted in 1795 and now in the possession of Charles 
Henry Hart, Philadelphia] 



HISTORY OF THE 

UNITED STATES 



FROM 986 TO 1905 



BV 

THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON 

AUTHOR OF "YOUNG FOLKS' HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES" 

AND 

WILLIAM MACDONALD 

PROFESSOR OF HISTORY IN BROWN UNIVERSITY 



ILLUSTRATED 
WITH MAPS. PLANS, PORTRAITS, ETC. 




NEW YORK AND LONDON 

HARPER (?f BROTHERS PUBLISHERS 

I 90 5 






pBRAHY of OOMsi^ 
I Two Copies fieceivea j 

MAR J6 1905 

^ 30Ryriij:in tuiry | 



L^ 



/<9<i' J/> y:. I 



COPY 13. 



Copyright, 1882, 1885, '905, by H akpkr & Brothers. 

A// rijr^ifs resrrved. 



•r~ Li 



F 



NOTE 

THE original edition of the History of the United States 
of America, bv Thomas Wentworth Higginson, ex- 
tended only to the close of President Jackson's adminis- 
tration. When first issued it was promptly accorded 
high rank in the estimation of readers of history; and 
the publishers, being impressed with the importance of 
perpetuating a work of such acknowledged merit, have 
prepared this new edition, enlarged and revised to date. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. The First Americans . i 

II. When the Vikings Came 25 

III. The Spanish Discoverers 50 

IV. The Old English Seamen 73 

V. The French Voyageurs 104 

VI. "An English Nation" 129 

VII. The Hundred Years' War 160 

VIII. The Second Generation of Englishmen in 

America 184 

IX. The British Yoke 208 

X. The Dawning of Independence 232 

XI. The Declaration 253 

XII. The Birth of a Nation 270 

XIII. Our Country's Cradle 296 

XIV. The Early American Presidents 320 

XV. The Second W.\r for Independence .... 343 

XVI. The Era of Good Feeli.ng 363 

XVII. The Great Western March 386 

XVIIT. "Old Hickory" 411 

XIX. Abolition of Slavery 434 

XX. Territorial Slavery 455 

XXI. The Prelude to the Civil War 4S3 

XXII. The War for the Union 513 

XXIII. Reconstruction 540 

XXIV. The Newest History 57S 

INDEX 611 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



stuart s first portraip ok washington . 

plan of the pueblo pintado 

plan of hungo pavie 

plan of iroquois house 

plan of nechecolee house . 

fortified village of mound-builders, ground-plan . 
morgan's "high bank pueblo" 

DIEGO DE LANDA's MAYA ALPHABET 

north ATLANTIC, BY THE ICELANDER SIGURD STEPHANIUS, 
IN 1570 

DA VINCl's MAPPEMONDE 

A CHART OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY 

MAP OF SEBASTIAN CABOT 

PART OF MAP OF DRAKe's VOYAGE, PUBLISHED BY J. HONDIUS 
IN HOLLAND TOWARDS THE CLOSE OF THE SIXTEENTH 
CENTURY 

MAP OF NEW ENGLAND COAST 

MAP OF JAMESTOWN SETTLEMENT 



PACK 

Frontispiece 

■ ■ 3 



14 
16 



47 
64 
65 

77 



93 
,36 
141 



lA SALLE CHRISTENING THE COUNTRY LOUISIANA 
FIRST VIRGINIA ASSEMBLY, GOVERNOR YEARDLEY 

PRESIDIfIG 

LEXINGTON GREEN 

PATRICK HENRY' 

IN THE AMERICAN TRENCHES, BATTLE OF NEW 

ORLEANS 

DANIEL WEBSTER 

vii 



Facing p. 174 



236 
286 



360 
460 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



CHARGE OF THE PALMETTOS AT CHURUBUSCO 

ABRAHAM LINCOLN' 

SERGEANT HART NAILING THE COLORS TO FLAG-STAFF, 

FORT SUMTER 

GENERAL ULYSSES S. GRANT 

ADMIRAL FARRAGUT 

GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE 

THE BATTLE OF MANILA BAY 

THE CAPTURE OF THE BLOCK-HOUSE AT SAN JUAN 
PANAMA CANAL AT BAS OBISPO SHOWING LINE OF 

CANAL PARTIALLY EXCAVATED 



FaciitK 



500 

520 

600 
602 

608 



MAPS 



NORTH AMERICA, 1750, SHOWING CLAIMS ARISING 

OUT OF EXPLORATION (Color) Facing p. 180 

THE UNITED STATES, 1783, SHOWING CLAIMS OF THE 

STATES (Color) " 280 

SLAVERY IN THE UNITED STATES, 1775-1865 (ColOf) " 438 

TERRITORIAL ACQUISITIONS OF THE UNITED STATES, 

1783-1853 (Color) " 48c 

THE UNITED STATES, I902 (Color) "' 594 

PHILIPPINE ISLANDS, 1Q02 " 604 

WEST INDIES, 1902 " 606 



HISTORY OF 
THE UNITED STATES 



HISTORY OF 
THE UNITED STATES 

I 

THE FIRST AMERICANS 

IT happened to the writer more than once, during 
the American Civil War, to sail up some great 
Southern river that was to all appearance unvisited 
by the ships of man. It might well have been the 
entrance to a newly discovered continent. No 
light-house threw its hospitable gleam across the 
dangerous bar, no floating buoys marked the in- 
tricacies of the channel; the lights had been ex- 
tinguished, the buoys removed, and the whole coast 
seemed to have gone back hundreds of years, revert- 
ing to its primeval and unexplored condition. There 
was commonly no sound except the light plash 
of waves or the ominous roll of heavy surf. Once 
only, I remember, when at anchor in a dense fog off 
St. Simon's Island, in Georgia, I heard a low, con- 
tinuous noise from the unseen distance, more wild 
and desolate than anything else in my memory can 
parallel. It came from within the vast girdle of 
niist, and seemed as if it might be the cry of lost 
souls out of some Inferno of Dante; yet it was but 
the sound of innumerable sea-fowl at the entrance 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

of the outer bay. Amid such experiences I was for 
the first time enabled to picture to myself the Amer- 
ican continent as its first European visitors saw it. 

Lonely as the land may have seemed, those early 
voyagers always came upon the traces, ere long, of 
human occupants. Who were those men and women, 
what was their origin, what their mode of life ? 
Every one who explores the mounds of the Ohio 
Valley, or gazes on the ruins of Yucatan, or looks into 
the wondrous narratives of the Spanish conquerors, 
must ask himself this question. For many years 
there seemed no answer to it. Facts came in faster 
and faster, and every new fact made the puzzle seem 
more hopeless, so long as no one could offer the 
solution. These various prehistoric races, so widely 
simdered, threw no light upon one another; they only 
deepened one another's darkness. Indians, Aztecs, 
Mayas, Mound-builders, seemed to have no common 
origin, no visible analogy of life or habits. The 
most skilful student was hardly in advance of the 
least skilful as to any real comprehension of the 
facts; nor could this possibly be otherwise, so long 
as the clew to the labyrinth was not found. It is 
only some fifty years since it may be said to have 
been discovered; only some thirty since it has been 
resolutely and persistently used. Let us see what 
results it has yielded. 

When, in 1852, Lieutenant J. H. Simpson, of the 
United States army, gave to the world the first de- 
tailed description of the vast ruined pueblos of New 
Mexico, and of the other pueblos still occupied, he 
did not know that he was providing the means for 
rewriting all the picturesque tales of the early con- 
querors. All their legends of cisatlantic emperors 



THE FIRST AMERICANS 

and empires were to be read anew in the light of that 
fliscovery. These romances had l:)een told in good 
faith, or something as near it as the narrator knew, 



D 



n[ 




Pueblo Pintado, 

Cbaco Canon, 
N.M. 

10 40 90 40 60 «0 70 80 



SCALE OF 100 FEET 



DD 
D 



DD 

m 

DDD 
DD^^ 

□Do 
QD 



OUTER WALLS 
'^■</ ^^-^ MUOH BROKEN DOWN 



INSIOE OF THIS COURT FULL OF 

oepnEssiONS, as if a number of 

UNOEB-GROUND R00M8 ONCE EXISTED 






jESTUFA) 



nop 
una 



][Z:[ 



]i II iczniz^a 





SECTION THROUQH AS 



^M^ 



PLAN OF THE PUEBLO PINTADO 



and the tales had passed from one to another, each 
building on what his predecessor had laid down. 
The accounts were accepted with little critical re- 
vision by modem writers; they filfed the attractive 

3 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

pages of Prescott; even Hubert Bancroft did not 
greatly modify thcni; but the unshrinking Hght of a 
new theory was to raise questions as to them all. 
And with them were to be linked also Stephens's 
dreams of vast cities, once occupied by an immense 
population, and now remaining only as unexplored 
ruins amid the forests of Central America. The 
facts he saw were confirmed, but his impressions had 
to be tested by a wholly new interpretation. And, 
after all, these various wonders were only to be ex- 
changed for new marvels, as interesting as the old 
ones, and more intelligible and coherent. 

From the publication of Lewis H. Morgan's re- 
markable essay, entitled " Montezimia's Dinner," 
in the North American Review for April, 1876, the 
new interpretation took a definite form. The vast 
accumulation of facts in regard to the early Ameri- 
can races then began to be classified and simplified; 
and with whatever difference as to details, the gen- 
eral opinion of scholars now inclines to the view 
which, when Morgan first urged it, was called star- 
tling and incredible. That view is still, in a sense, a 
theory, as Darwin's "origin of species" is still a 
theory ; but Morgan's speculations, hke Darwin's, be- 
gan a new era for the science to which they relate. 
He held that there never was a prehistoric American 
civilization, properly so called, but only an advanced 
and wonderfully skilful barbarism, or semi-civiliza- 
tion at the utmost. He maintained that the aborigi- 
nal races, except perhaps the Eskimo, were essential- 
ly one in their social structure, however they may 
have varied in development. In his view there 
never was an Aztec or Maya empire, but only a 
league of free tribes, appointing their own chiefs, and 

4 



THE FIRST AMERICANS 

accepting the same general modes of organization, 
based on consanguinity, that have prevailed among 
all the more advanced families of North American 
Indians. Montezuma was not an emperor, and had 
no palace, but he lived in the great communal dwell- 
ing of his tribe, where he was recognized and served 
as head. The forests of Yucatan held no vast cities 
— cities whose palaces remain, while the humble 
dwellings of the poor have perished — but only pueblo 
towns, in whose great communal structures the rich 
and the poor alike dwelt. There were questions enough 
left unsolved in American archaeology, no doubt, but 
the solution of this part of the problem was now pro- 
posed in intelligible terms, at least ; and it was rapid- 
ly followed up by the accurate researches of Morgan 
and Putnam and Bandelier, and by the systematic 
investigations of the Bureau of Ethnology at Wash- 
ington. 

I have said that all this new view of the problem 
dates from our knowledge of the Pueblo or Village 
Indians of New Mexico. What is a pueblo ? It is an 
Indian town, of organization and aspect so peculiar 
that it can best be explained by minute descriptions. 
Let us begin with the older examples, now in ruins. 
Mr. Bandelier examined for the American Archaeolog- 
ical Institute a ruined building at Pecos, in New 
Mexico, which he claimed to be the largest aboriginal 
structure of stone within the limits of the United 
States. It has. a circuit of 1480 feet, is five stories 
high, and once included by calculation 500 separate 
rooms. This is simply a ruined pueblo. The com- 
posite dwelling once sheltered the inhabitants of a 
whole Indian town. Pueblo Bonito, on the Rio 
Chacos, described by Lieutenant Simpson, and later 

5 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

by Dr. W. H. Jackson, is 1716 feet in circuit; it in- 
cluded 641 rooms, and could have housed, it is esti- 
mated, 3000 Indians. A stone pueblo on the Animas 
River, visited and described by Lewis H. Morgan, 
had more than 400 rooms— and such instances could 
easily be multipled. As a rule, each of these build- 
ings constituted a village — a single vast house built 
on three sides of a court. The stories rose in suc- 
cessive terraces, each narrower than the one beneath, 
and each approachable only by ladders, there being 
no sign of any internal means of ascent from story to 
stor}^ The outer walls were built usually of thin 




300 Ft. 

PLAN OF HUNGO PA VIE 



slabs of gray sandstone, laid with the greatest pre- 
cision and accuracy, often with no signs of mortar, 
the interstices being filled with stones of the minutest 
thinness, so that the whole ruin appears in the dis- 
tance, according to Simpson, "like a magnificent 
piece of mosaic-work." These pueblos were practi- 
cally impregnable to all uncivilized warfare, and they 
differ only in material, not in the essentials of their 
structure, from the adobe pueblos occupied by the 
Village Indians of to-day. 

6 



THE FIRST AMERICANS 

The first impression made by the adobe pueblos 
now inhabited is quite different from that produced 
by these great stone structures, yet the internal ar- 
rangement is almost precisely the same. As you 
cross, for instance, the green meadows of the Rio 
Grande, you may see rising abruptly before you, like 
a colossal ant-hill, a great drab mound with broken 
lines that suggest roofs at the top. As you draw 
nearer, you see before you solid walls or banks of 
the same drab hue, perforated here and there by 
small openings. These walls are in tiers — tiers of 
terraces — each spreading out flat at the top, and a 
few feet wide, with a higher one behind it and an- 
other behind that, until in some cases they are five 
stories high. Strips of what seemiS lattice-work stand 
on these terraces, slanted, tilted, propped irregularly 
here and there ; they also are of a drab color, "as if 
walls, roofs, ladders, all had been run, wet mud, into 
a fretted mould, baked, and turned out like some 
freaky confectioner's device made of opaque, light- 
brown cough candy." At intervals upon these ter- 
races, or on the ground near the base of the walls, 
there stand low oval mounds of the same baked drab 
mud, shaped like the half of an egg-shell, with an 
aperture left in the small end. Then on the roof, 
lifted a few feet above them, there are little thatches 
of brush, ragged and unfinished, like the first rough 
platform of twigs and mud which the robin constructs 
for her nest. Closer inspection shows that the tiers 
and terraces are the stories and roofs of the houses; 
the holes are doors and windows opening into rooms 
under the terraced roofs; the strips of lattice-work 
are ladders, these being the only means of going from 
one terrace to another; the little oval mounds are 

7 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

ovens ; and the bits of thatch are arbors on the roofs. 
In the pueblo of San Juan — as portrayed by Mrs. 
Helen Jackson, of whose graphic description the above 
is but an abstract — there are four or five of these 
large terraced buildings, with a small open plaza or 
court between. When Mrs. Jackson visited the scene, 
upon a festal day, this plaza was filled with Indians 
and Mexicans, and the terraces were all covered with 
them, dressed for the most part in blankets of the 
gayest colors, relieved against the drab adobe walls 
or against a brilliant blue sky. This group of strange 
structures, thus tenanted and thus adorned, is an in- 
habited pueblo. 

Sometimes, as at Taos, the separate dwellings or 
cells of the building are so crowded together as to 
resemble, in the words of Bandelier, "an extraor- 
dinarily large honey-comb." The same is the case 
with that of Zufii, both these pueblos being no\v in- 
habited, and the latter, which is the larger, giving 
shelter to several hundred Indians. Others again, 
like that of Acoma, are so protected by their situa- 
tion that this close aggregation of cells is not neces- 
sary; and the little tenements are simply placed side 
by side like houses in a block, the whole being perch- 
ed on a cliff three hundred and fifty feet high, acces- 
sible only by a single row of steps cut in the rock. 
Sometimes the whole structure is in a cleft of a rock, 
yet even there it is essentially a pueblo, with the same 
terraces and the same ladders, so far as there is room. 
Sometimes we find the main x)ueblo, ruined or in- 
habited, beneath the cliff, and the citadel of refuge 
in a position almost inaccessible among the rocks 
above. Some of these masses of building are now 
occupied, more are in ruins. Each shelters, or may 

8 



THE FIRST AMERICANS 

have sheltered, hundreds of inhabitants, and the ex- 
isting Village Indians probably represent for us not 
merely the race, but the mode of living, of those who 
built every one of these great structures. If we wish 
to know what was the America which Cortez invaded, 
we must look for it in the light of these investiga- 
tions. 

No trace now remains of the so-called city of Mexico 
as Cortez saw it ; but we know, in a vague way, how 
it compared with the pueblos that still exist. The 
clew to a comparison is as follows: There prevailed 
in the sixteenth century a legend that seven bishops 
had once sailed west from Portugal, and founded 
seven cities in America, Cabega de Vaca, after his 
wanderings in the interior of America in 1536, brought 
back an account of large and semi -civilized commimi- 
ties dwelling in palaces ; and it was thought that these 
might be identified with the cities founded by the 
bishops. They were seen again by Friar Marcos, of 
Nizza, or Nice, in 1539, and by Coronado in 1540, and 
were by them mentioned as ' ' the seven cities of Cibola. ' ' 
Coronado fully describes the "great houses of stone," 
"with ladders instead of stairs," thus identifying 
them unmistakably with the still existing pueblos. 
Whether they were the seven pueblos of the Zunis, 
or those of the Moquis in Arizona, is as yet unsettled ; 
but it is pretty certain that they were identical with 
the one or the other; and as Friar Marcos declared 
them to be in his day "more considerable than 
Mexico," we have something like a standard of com- 
parison. Such great comm^unal houses, which could 
shelter a whole Spanish army within their walls, 
could seem nothing else than palaces to those wholly 
unused to the social organization which they repre- 



HISTORY' OF THE U N 1 T E D STATES 

sented. The explorei's reasoned, just as students 
reasoned for more than three centuries longer, that 
structures so vast could only have been erected by 
despotism. They saw an empire where there was no 
empire ; the}^ supposed themiselves in the presence of 
a society like their own; all their descriptions were 
cast in the mould of this society, and the mould re- 
mained unbroken until the civilized world rediscov- 
ered the pueblos. 

Again, so long as the Pueblo Indians were unknown 
to us, there appeared an impassable gap between the 
roving Indians of the North and the more advanced 
race that Cortez conquered. Yet writers had long 
since pointed out the seeming extravagance of the 
Spanish descriptions, the exaggeration of their sta- 
tistics. In the celebrated Spanish narrative of 
Montezuma's banquet, Bernal Diaz, writing thirty 
years after the event, describes four women as bring- 
ing water to their chief — an occurrence not at all im- 
probable. In the account by Herrera, written still 
later, the four have increased to twenty. According 
to Diaz, Montezuma had 200 of his nobility on guard 
in the palace ; Cortez expands this to 600, and Her- 
rera to 3000. Zuazo, describing the pueblo or town 
of Mexico in 1521, attributed to it 60,000 inhabitants, 
and the ' ' anonymous conqueror ' ' who was with Cor- 
tez wrote the same. This estimate Morgan believes 
to have been twice too large ; but Gomara and Peter 
Martyr transformed the inhabitants into houses — 
the estimate which Prescott followed — while Torque- 
mada, cited by Clavigero, goes still further, and 
writes 120,000 houses. Supposing that, as seems 
probable, the Mexican houses were of the communal 
type, holding fifty or a hundred persons each, we 



THE FIRST A ^[ E R I C A N S 

have an original population of perhaps 30,000 swol- 
len to 6,000,000. These facts illustrate the extrava- 
gances of statement to which the study of the New 
Mexican pueblos has largely put an end. This study 
has led us to abate much of the exaggeration with 
which the ancient Mexican society has been treated, 
and on the other hand to do justice to the more ad- 
vanced among the tribes of northern Indians. The 
consequence is that the two types appear less unlike 
each other than was formerly supposed. 

Let us compare the habits of the Pueblo Indians 
with those of more northern tribes. Lewis and Clark 
thus describe a village of the Chopunish, or Nez 
Perces, on the Columbia River: 

"The village of Tunnachemootoolt is in fact only 
a single house 150 feet long, built after the Chopunish 
fashion with sticks, straw, and dried grass. It con- 
tains twenty-four fires, about double that number 
of families, and might perhaps muster 100 fighting- 
men." 

This represents a communal household of nearly 
five hundred people, and another great house of the 
same race (Nechecolees) was still larger, being 226 
feet in length. The houses of the Iroquois were 100 
feet long. The Creeks, the Mandans, the Sacs, the 
Mohaves, and other tribes lived in a similar com- 
munal way, several related families in each house, 
living and eating in common. All these built their 
houses of perishable materials; some arranged them 
for defence, others did not, but all the structures 
bear a certain analogy to each other, and even, when 
carefully considered, to the pueblos of New Mexico. 

Compare, for instance, a ground-plan of one of the 
Chopunish houses among the Nechecolees with that 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

of an Iroquois house and with a New Mexican pueblo, 
and one is struck with the resemblance. All these 
houses seem obviously adapted to a communal life, 
and traces of this practice, varying in different places, 



" i 


1 


i 


i 1 


i 






1 
1 1 








eoFt. 














PLAN 


OF IROQUOIS 


HOUSE 








II 


II 


II 


II 


II 


II 






II 


II 


II 


II 


II 


II 





22(i Ft. 

PLAN OF NECHECOLEE HOUSE 



come constantly before us. The Pueblo Indians, like 
other tribes, hold their lands in comm'on. The trav- 
eller Stephens saw near the ruins of Uxmal the food 
of a hundred laboring-men prepared at one hut, and 
each family sending for its own portion — ' ' a pro- 
cession of women and children, each carrying a 
smoking bowl of hot broth, all coming down the same 
path, and dispersing among the huts." But this 
description might easily be paralleled among north- 
ern tribes. I will not dwell on the complex laws of 
descent and relationship, which are so elaborately 
described by Morgan in his Ancient Society, and 
which appear to have prevailed in general among all 
the aboriginal clans. The essential result of all these 
various observations is this, that whatever degree of 
barbarism or semi-civilization was attained by any 
of the early American races, it was everywhere based 
on similar ways of living; it never resembled feudal- 



THE FIRST AMERICANS 

ism, but came much nearer to communism; it was 
the condition of a people substantially free, whose 
labor was voluntary, and whose chiefs were of their 
own choosing. After a most laborious investigation, 
Bandelier— in the Twelfth Report of the Peabody In- 
stitute — came to the conclusion that ' ' the social or- 
ganization and mode of government of the ancient 
Mexicans was a military democracy, originally based 
upon communism in living." And if this was ap- 
parently true even in the seemingly powerful and 
highly organized races of Mexico, it was certainly 
true of every North American tribe. 

If we accept this conclusion — and most archaeolo- 
gists now accept it— much of what has been written 
about prehistoric American civilization proves to have 
been too hastily said. Tylor, for instance, after visit- 
ing the pyramid of Cholula, laid it down as an axiom : 
"Such buildings as these can only be raised under 
peculiar social conditions. The ruler must be a des- 
potic sovereign, and the mass of the people slaves, 
whose subsistence and whose lives are sacrificed with- 
out scruple to execute the fancies of the monarch, 
who is not so much the governor as the unrestricted 
owner of the country and the people." He did not 
sufficiently consider that this is the first and easiest 
way to explain all great structures representing vast 
labor. A much-quoted American writer finds it neces- 
sary to explain even the works of the Mound-builders 
in a similar way. J. W. Foster thinks it clear that 
"the condition of society among the Mound-builders 
was not that of freemen, or, in other words, that the 
state possessed absolute power over the lives and 
fortunes of its subjects." But the theory of despot- 
ism is no more needed to explain a mound or a pueblo 

13 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

than to justify the existence of the long houses of 
the Iroquois. Even the less civilized types of the 
aboriginal American race had learned how to unite 
in erecting their communal dwellings ; and surely the 
higher the grade the greater the power. 

The Mound-builders were formerly regarded as a 




FORTIFIED VILLAGE OF MOUND-BUILDERS, GROUND-PLAN 
• 14 



THE FIRST AMERICANS 

race so remote from the present Indian tribes that 
there could be nothing in common between them, yet 
all recent inquiries tend to diminish this distance. 
Many Indian tribes have built burial mounds for 
their dead. Squier, after the publication of his great 
work on the mounds of the Mississippi Valley, made 
an exploration of the mounds of western New York, 
and found, contrary to all his preconceived opinions, 
that these last must have been made by the Iroquois. 
Some of the most elaborate series of works, as those 
at Marietta and Circleville, Ohio, have yielded from 
their deepest recesses articles of European manufact- 
ure, showing an origin not further back than the 
historic period. Spanish swords and blue glass beads 
have been found in the mounds of Georgia and Flor- 
ida. But we need not go so far as this to observe 
the analogies of structure. If we compare Professor 
F. W. Putnam's groimd-plan of a fortified village of 
the Mound-builders on Spring Creek, in Tennessee, 
with a similar plan of a Mandan village as given 
by Prince Maximilian of Neuwied in 1843, we find 
their arrangement to be essentially the same. Each 
is on a promontory protected by the bend of a 
stream ; each is surrounded by an embankment which 
was once, in all probability, surmounted by a pali- 
sade. Within this embankment were the houses, dis- 
tributed more irregularly in Putnam's plan, more 
formally and conventionally in that of the Prince of 
Neuwied; in other respects the two villages are al- 
most duplicates. It is clear that the Mound-builders 
had much in common with those well-known tribes 
of Indians the Mandans and Onondagas, in their way 
of placing and protecting their houses; and another 
comparison has been made which links their works 

IS 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

on the other side with the New Mexican pueblos. 
Morgan prepared a conjectural restoration of the 
High Bank mounds in Ross County, Ohio, on the 




morgan's "high bank pueblo 



theory that in that instance the houses of the in- 
habitants were long houses in structure, and were 
built for defensive purposes on top of the embank- 
ment. This makes the villages into pueblos, and 
Morgan therefore baptized the settlement anew with 
the name of "High Bank Pueblo." A mere glance 
at his restoration will show how much there was in 
common between the various types of what he calls 
the aboriginal American race. 

It remains to be considered whether the very high- 
est forms of this race — the Aztecs and the Mayas — 
are properly to be called civilized. It is a matter 
of definition; it depends upon what we regard as 
constituting civilization. Here was a people whose 
development showed strange contradictions. The 
ancient Mexicans were skilled in horticulture, yet 

i6 



THE FIRST AMERICANS 

had no beasts of burden and no milk, although the 
ox and buffalo were within easy reach. They were 
a trading people and used money, but had apparently 
no system of weighing. They used stone tools so 
sharp that Cortez found barbers shaving with razors 
of obsidian in the public squares; they worked in 
gold and copper, yet they had not learned to make 
iron tools from the masses of that metal which lay, 
almost pure, in the form of aerolites, in their midst. 
They could observe eclipses and make a calendar, yet 
it is still doubtful whether they had what is proper- 
ly to be called an alphabet. It is certain that they 
had a method of picture-writing, not apparently re- 
moved in kind from the sort of pictorial mnemonics 
practised by many tribes of Indians at the present 
day ; and all definite efforts to extract more than this 
from it have thus far failed. Brasseur de Bourbourg 
believed that he had found in 1863, in the library of 
the Royal Academy of History at Madrid, a manu- 
script key to the phonetic alphabet of the Mayas. It 
was attached to an unpublished description of Yu- 
catan (RelacioJt de las Cosas de Yucatan), wi^itten 
by Diego de Landa, one of the early Spanish bishops 
of that country. Amid the general attention of 
"Americanists," Brasseur de Bourbourg tried his 
skill upon one of the few Maya manuscripts, but with 
little success ; and Dr. Valentini, with labored analy- 
sis, later gave reasons for thinking the whole so-called 
alphabet a Spanish fabrication. The very question 
of the alphabet remains, therefore, still unproved, 
while Tylor, one of the highest authorities on an- 
thropology, considers it essential to the claim of civ- 
ilization that a nation should have a written lan- 
guage. Tried by this highest standard, therefore, we 
s 17 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

cannot quite say that either the Aztecs or the Mayas 
were civilized. 

To sum up the modern theory, a key to the whole 
aboriginal American society is given in the pueblos 
of New Mexico, representing the communal house- 
hold. This household is still to be seen at its lowest 
point in the lodges of the roving Indians of the North, 
and it produced, when carried to its highest point. 



Blgns. Phonetic 
value. 




10. 



11. 



12. 



13 

14. 
15. 

16. 

17. 

18. 



Slens. 'Bionetia 
yalae. 



ca 




(M 




// 



■%■? "• 



-lb". 



19. 
20. 

21. 

22. 

23. 
24. 

25. 

26 

27, 



Valium 




ffl 




pp 

en 



I"" 



UE LA.NDA S MAVA Al 
l8 



THE FIRST AMERICANS 

all the art and architecture of Uxmal, and all the 
so-called civilization which the Spanish conquerors 
admired, exaggerated, and overthrew. The myste- 
rious mounds of the Ohio Valley were for the most 
part erected only that they might give to their build- 
ers the advantages possessed without labor by those 
who dwelt upon the high table-lands of New Mexico. 
The great ruined edifices in the valley of the Chacos 
are the same in kind with the ruined "palaces" of 
Yucatan. All these^lodges, palaces, and pueblos 
alike — are but the communal dwellings of one great 
aboriginal race, of uncertain origin and history, vary- 
ing greatly in grade of development, but one in in- 
stitutions, in society, and in blood. This is the mod- 
ern theory, a theory which has given a new impulse 
to all investigation and all thought upon this sub- 
ject. 

What is now its strength, and what its weakness? 
Its strength is that of a strong, simple, intelligible 
working hypothesis — not merely the best that has 
been offered, but the first. What is its weakness? 
This only, that, like many a promising theory in the 
natural sciences, it still leaves some facts to be fully 
accounted for. 

Morgan, with all his great merits, had not always 
the moderation which gives such peculiar value to 
the works of Darwin; he was not always willing to 
distinguish between what was firm ground and what 
was insecure. In order to make his theory appear 
consistent, he had to ignore many difficulties and set- 
tle many points in an off-hand manner, and there 
is something almost exasperating in the positiveness 
with which he sometimes assumed as proved that 
which was only probable. Grant all his analogies of 

19 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

the gens and the communal dwelhng, the fact still 
is that in studying the Central American remains we 
find ourselves dealing with a race who had got be- 
yond mere household architecture, and were rising to 
the sphere of art, so that their attempts in this re- 
spect must enter into our estimate. In studying 
them from this point of view, we encounter new dif- 
ficulties which Morgan wholly ignores, and which 
later investigators have not as yet satisfactorily ex- 
plained. The tales of the Spanish conquerors are 
scarcely harder to accept than the assumption that 
all the artistic decoration of the Yucatan edifices was 
lavished upon communal houses, built only to be 
densely packed with Indians "in the Middle Status 
of Barbarism," as Morgan calls them. That a statue 
like that of Chaac-Mol, discovered by Dr. Le Plon- 
geon at Chichen-Itza, should have been produced by 
a race not differing in descent or essential habits from 
the northern Iroquois seems simply incredible. 

Consider the difference. In Central America we 
find the remains of a race which had begun to busy 
itself with the very highest department of art — the 
delineation of the human figure; and which had at- 
tained to grace and vigor, if not yet to beauty, in 
this direction. The stately stone heads of Yucatan; 
the arch and spirited features depicted on the Maya 
incense-burners; the fine face carved in sandstone, 
brought from Topila, and now in possession of the 
New York Historical Society — these indicate a sphere 
of development utterly beyond that of those northern 
Indians whose utmost achievement consists in some 
graceful vase like that found in Burlington, Ver- 
mont, and now preserved by the university there. 

It is safer to leave the question where it was left 



THE FIRST AMERICANS 

by another deceased American archceologist scarcely 
less eminent than Morgan, and not less courageous, 
but far more gentle and more guarded — Samuel Foster 
Haven, of Worcester, Massachusetts, the accom- 
plished librarian of the American Antiquarian So- 
ciety : ' ' Mr. Morgan has grasped some of the problems 
of aboriginal character and habits with a firm and 
vigorous hand, but is far from being entitled to claim 
that he has discovered the entire secret of prehistoric 
life on this continent." 

But now suppose the modern theory to be accepted 
in its fulness. Let us agree, for the moment, with 
Morgan, that there was in America, when discovered, 
but one race of Indians besides the Eskimo — the 
Red Race. Still there lies behind us the problem, 
in whose solution science has hardly yet gained even 
a foothold. Whence did this race originate? Here 
we deliberately confuse ourselves a little by the word 
"discovery." When we speak of the discovery of 
America we always mean the arrival of Europeans, 
forgetting that there was possibly a time when Eu- 
rope itself was first discovered by Asiatics, and that 
for those Asiatics it was almost as easy to discover 
America. All that is necessary, even at this day, to 
bring a Japanese junk to the Pacific coast of North 
America is that it should be blown out to sea and 
then lose its rudder; the first mishap has often hap- 
pened, the second casualty has almost always follow- 
ed, and the Gulf Stream of the Pacific, the Kuro Siwo, 
or "black stream," or "Japan current," has done 
the rest. Mr. Charles W. Brooks, of San Francisco, 
had a record of no less than a hundred such instances, 
and there is no reason why similar events should not 
have been occurring for centuries. Nor is it, indeed, 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

needful to go so far as this for a means of communi- 
cation. Bering Strait is but little wider than the 
English Channel, and it is as easy to make the pas- 
sage from Asia to America as from France to Eng- 
land ; and indeed easier for half the year, when Bering 
Strait is frozen. Besides all this, both geology and 
botany indicate that the separation between the two 
continents did not always exist. Dr. Asa Gray, our 
highest botanical authority, early pointed out the 
extraordinary identity between the Japanese flora 
and that of the northern United States, as indicat- 
ing a period when the two continents were one. The 
colonization of America from Asia was thus prac- 
ticable, at any rate, and that far more easily than 
any approach from the European side. The simple 
races on each side of Bering Strait, which now com- 
municate with each other freely, may have done the 
same from very early times. They needed no con- 
sent of sovereigns to do it: they were not obliged to 
wait humbly in the antechamber of some king, suing 
for permission to discover for him another world. 
This we must recognize at the outset; but when it is 
granted, we are still upon the threshold. Concede 
that America is but an outlying Asia, it does not 
follow that America was peopled from Asia; the 
course of population may first have gone the other 
way. Or it may be that the human race had upon 
each continent an autochthonous or indigenous place, 
according as we prefer a hard Greek word or a hard 
Latin word to express the simple fact that a race 
comes into existence on a certain soil instead of 
migrating thither. Migrations, too, in plenty may 
in this case have come afterwards, and modified the 
type, giving to it that Asiatic or Mongoloid cast 



THE FIRST AMERICANS 

which is now acknowledged by almost all ethnol- 
ogists. 

How long may this process of itiigration and min- 
gling have gone on upon the American continent? 
Who can tell? Sir John Lubbock says "not more 
than three thousand years." The late John Fiske 
concluded that there had been no appreciable com- 
munication between America and Asia for at least 
twenty thousand years. Plainly it is not so easy to 
fix a limit. To be sure, some evidences of antiquity 
that are well, established in Europe are as yet want- 
ing in America, or at least imperfectly proved. In 
the French bone -caves there have been found un- 
questionable representations of the mammoth scratch- 
ed on pieces of its own ivory, and exhibiting the 
shaggy hair and curved tusks that distinguish it from 
all other elephants. There is as yet no such direct 
and unequivocal evidence in America of the exist- 
ence of man during the interglacial period. The al- 
leged evidence fails to satisfy the more cautious ar- 
chaeologists. The so-called "elephants' trunks" used 
in ornamentation on the Central American buildings 
offer only a vague and remote resemblance to the 
supposed originals. The "elephant pipe" dug up in 
Iowa, and preserved by the Davenport Academy of 
Sciences, does not quite command confidence as to 
its genuineness. The "Elephant Mound," described 
and figured in the Smithsonian Report for 1872, has 
a merely suggestive resemblance, like most of the 
mounds, to the objects whose name it bears. Lap- 
ham long since pointed out that the names of 
"Lizard Mound," "Serpent Mound," and the like, 
are usually based on very remote similarities; and 
Squier tells us of one mound which had been likened 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

successively to a bird, a bow and arrow, and a 
man. 

Other sources of^ evidence are scarcely more sat- 
isfactory. There is no doubt that mammoth bones 
have been found mingled with arrow-heads in some 
places, and with matting or pottery in others; but 
unhappily some doubt rests as yet on all these dis- 
coveries. It is in no case quite sure that the deposits 
had remained undisturbed as found, or that they 
had not been washed together by floods of water. 
Up to the present time the strongest argument in 
favor of the very early existence of man upon this 
continent is not to be found in such comparatively 
simple lines of evidence, but in the investigations of 
Dr. Abbott among primeval implements in New 
Jersey, or those of Professor J. D. Whitney among 
human remains in California. These and similar in- 
quiries may yet conclusively establish the fact that 
the aboriginal American man was contemporary 
with the mammoth; in the mean time it is only pos- 
sible, not quite proved. 

Must we not admit that in our efforts to explain 
the origin of the first American man it is necessary to 
end, after all, with an interrogation mark? 



II 

WHEN THE VIKINGS CAME 

THE American antiquarians of the middle of the 
nineteenth century had a great disHke to any- 
thing vague or legendary, and they used to rejoice 
that there was nothing of that sort about the dis- 
covery of America. The history of other parts of 
the world, they said, might begin in myth and tra- 
dition, but here at least was firm ground, a definite 
starting - point, plain outlines, and no vague and 
shadowy romance. Yet they were destined to be 
disappointed, and it may be that nothing has been 
lost, after all. Our low American shores would look 
tame and uninteresting but for the cloud and mist 
which are perpetually trailing in varied beauty above 
them, giving a constant play of purple light and pale 
shadow, and making them deserve the name given 
to such shores by the old Norse legends, "Wonder- 
strands." It is the same, perhaps, with our early 
history. It may be fitting that the legends of the 
Northmen should come in, despite all the resistance 
of antiquarians, to supply just that indistinct and 
vague element which is needed for picturesqueness. 
At any rate, whether we like it or not, the legends 
are here. 

I can well remember, as a boy, the excitement 
produced among Harvard College professors when the 

25 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

ponderous volume called Antiquitates AmericancB, 
containing the Norse legends of "Yinland," with 
the translations of Professor Rafn, made its appear- 
ance on the library table. For the first time the 
claim was openly made that there had been Eu- 
ropean visitors to this continent before Columbus. 
The historians shrank from the innovation : it spoiled 
their comfort. Indeed, George Bancroft would hard- 
ly allude to the subject, and set aside the legends, 
using a most inappropriate phrase, as "mythological." 
And it so happened, as will appear by-and-by, that 
when the claim was first made it was encumbered 
with some very poor arguments. Nevertheless, the 
main story was not permanently hurt by these weak 
points. Its truth has never been successfully im- 
peached; at any rate, we cannot deal completely 
with American history unless we give some place to 
the Norse legends. Picturesque and romantic in 
themselves, they concert^ men in whom we have 
every reason to be interested. These Northmen, or 
Vikings, were not a far-away people with whom we 
have nothing in common, but they really belonged 
to the self -same race of men with 'most of ourselves. 
They were, perhaps, the actual ancestors of some 
living Americans, and kinsfolk to the majority. Men 
of the same race conquered England, and were known 
as Saxons; then conquered France, and were known 
as Normans; and finally crossed over from France 
and conquered England again. These Norse Vikings 
were, like most of us, Scandinavians, and so were 
really closer to us in blood and in language than was 
the great Columbus. 

What were the ways and manners of these Vikings? 
We must remember at the outset that their name 

26 



WHEN THE VIKINGS CAME 

implies nothing of royalty. They were simply the 
dwellers on a vik, or bay. They were, in other words, 
the sea-side population of the Scandinavian penin- 
sula, the only part of Europe which then sent forth 
a race of sea-rovers. They resembled in some re- 
spects the Algerine corsairs of a later period, but, un- 
like the Algerines, they were conquerors as well as 
pirates, and were ready to found settlements where- 
ever they went. Nor were the Vikings yet Chris- 
tians, for their life became more peaceful from the 
time when Christianity came among them. In the 
prime of their heathenism they were the terror of 
Europe. They carried their forays along the whole 
coast. They entered the ports of England, and 
touched at the islands on the Scottish coast. They 
sailed up French rivers, and Charlemagne, the ruler 
of western Europe, was said to have wept at seeing 
their dark ships. They reached the Mediterranean, 
and formed out of their own number the famous 
Varangian guard of the later Greek emperors, the 
guard which is described by Walter Scott in Count 
Robert of Paris. They reached Africa, which they call- 
ed "Saracens' Land," and there took eighty castles. 
All their booty they sent back to Norway, and this 
wealth included not only what they took from ene- 
mies, but what they had from the very courts they 
served; for it was the practice at Constantinople, 
when an emperor died, for the Norse guard to go 
through the palaces and take whatever they could 
hold in their hands. To this day Greek and Arabic 
gold coins and chains may be found in the houses 
of the Norwegian peasants, or seen in the museums 
of Christiania and Copenhagen. 

Such were the Vikings, and it is needless to say that 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

with such practices they were in perpetual turmoil at 
home, and needed a strong hand to keep the peace 
among them. Sometimes a king would make a foray 
among his own people, as recorded in this extract 
from the Heimskringla, or Kings of Norway, written 
by Snorri Sturleson, and translated by Laing: 

"King Harald heard that the Vikings, who were in the 
West Sea in winter, plundered far and wide in the middle 
part of Norway, and therefore every summer he made an 
expedition to search the isles and outskerries [outlying rocks] 
on the coast. Wheresoever the Vikings heard of him they 
all took to flight, and most of them out into the open ocean. 
At last the king grew weary of this work, and therefore one 
summer he sailed with his fleet right out into the West Sea. 
First he came to Shetland, and he slew all the Vikings who 
could not save themselves by flight. Then King Harald 
sailed southward to 'the Orkney Islands, and cleared them 
all of Vikings. Thereafter he proceeded to the Hebrides, 
plundered there, and slew many Vikings who formerly had 
had men-at-arms under them. Many a battle was fought, 
and King Harald was always victorious. He then plun- 
dered far and wide in Scotland itself, and had a battle there." 

We see from the last sentence that King Harald 
himself was but a stronger Viking, and that, after 
driving away other plunderers, he did their work for 
himself. Such were all the Norsemen of the period ; 
they were daring, generous, open - handed. They 
called gold in their mythology "the serpent's bed," 
and called a man who was liberal in giving "a hater 
of the serpent's bed," because such a man parts with 
gold as with a thing he hates. But they were cruel, 
treacherous, unscrupulous. Harald, when he com- 
manded the emperor's body-guard at Constantinople 
and was associated with Greek troops, always left 
his allies to fight for themselves and be defeated, and 

28 



WHEN THE VIKINGS CAME 

only fought where his Norsemen could fight alone 
and get all the glory. While seeming to defend the 
Emperor Michael, he enticed him into his power and 
put out his eyes. The Norse chronicles never con- 
demn such things; there is never a voice in favor of 
peace or mercy; but they assume, as a matter of 
course, that a leader will be foremost in attack and 
last in retreat. In case of need he must give his life 
for his men. There is no finer touch in Homer than 
is found in one of the sagas which purport to describe 
the Norse voyages to Vinland. It must be remem- 
bered, in order to understand it, that the Northmen 
believed that certain seas were infested with the 
teredo, or ship-worm, and that vessels in those seas 
were in the very greatest danger. 

" Bjarni Grimalfson was driven with his ship into the 
Irish Ocean, and they came into a worm-sea, and straight- 
way began the ship to sink under them. They had a boat 
which was smeared with seal oil, for the sea- worms do not 
attack that. They went into the boat, and then saw that it 
could not hold them all. Then said Bjarni: 'Since the boat 
cannot give room to more than the half of our men, it is my 
counsel that lots should be drawn for those to go in*the 
boat, for it shall not be according to rank.' This thought 
they all so high-minded an offer that no one would speak 
against it. They then did so that lots were drawn, and it 
fell upon Bjarni to go in the boat, and the half of the men 
with him, for the boat had not room for more. But when 
they had gotten into the boat, then said an Icelandic man 
who was in the ship, and had come with Bjarni from Ice- 
land, ' Dost thou intend, Bjarni, to separate from me here ?' 
Bjarni answered, 'So it turns out.' Then said the other, 
'Very different was thy promise to my father when I went 
with thee from Iceland than thus to abandon me, for thou 
saidst that we should both share the same fate.' Bjarni 
replied: ' It shall not be thus. Go thou down into the boat, 
and I will go up into the ship, since I see that thou art so 

29 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED S T A T !<: S 

desirous to live.' Then went Bjarni up into the ship, but 
this man down into the boat, and after that continued they 
their voyage until they came to Dublin, in Ireland, and 
told there these things. But it is most people's belief that 
Bjarni and his companions were lost in the worm-sea, for 
nothing was heard of them since that time." 

Centuries have passed since the ships of the Vi- 
kings floated on the water, and yet we know, almost 
as if they had been launched yesterday, their model 
and their build. They are found delineated on rocks 
in Norway, and their remains have been dug up from 
beneath the ground. One of them was unearthed 
from a mound of blue clay at Gokstad, or Sandefjord, 
in Norway, at a point now half a mile from the sea; 
and it had plainly been used as the burial-place of 
its owner. The sepulchral chamber in which the 
body of the Viking had been deposited was built 
amidships, being tentlike in shape, and made of logs 
placed side by side, leaning against a ridge-pole. In 
this chamber were found human bones, the bones of 
a little dog, the bones and feathers of a peacock, some 
fis]|-hooks, and several bronze and lead ornaments 
for belts and harness. Round about the ship were 
found the bones of nine or ten horses and dogs, which 
had probably been sacrificed at the time of the burial. 
The vessel was seventy-seven feet eleven inches at the 
greatest length, and sixteen feet eleven inches at the 
'greatest width, and from the top of the keel to the 
gunwale amidships she was five feet nine inches deep. 
She had twenty ribs, and would draw less than four 
feet of water. She was clinker-built; that is, had 
plates slightly overlapped, like the shingles on the 
side of a house. The planks and timbers of the 
frame were fastened together with withes made of 

30 



WHEN THE VIKINGS CAME 

roots, but the oaken boards of the side were united 
by iron rivets firmly chnched. The bow and stem 
were similar in shape, and must have risen high out 
of water, but were so broken that it was impossible 
to tell how they originally ended. The keel was 
deep, and made of thick oak beams, and there was 
no trace of any metallic sheathing; but an iron an- 
chor was found almost rusted to pieces. There was 
no deck, and the seats for rowers had been taken 
(^ut. The oars were twenty feet long, and the oar- 
holes, sixteen on each side, had slits sloping towards 
the stern to allow the blades of the oars to be put 
through from inside. 

The most peculiar thing ^bout the ship was the 
rudder, which was on the starboard or right side, this 
side being originally called "steerboard" from this 
circumstance. The rudder was like a large oar, with 
long blade and short handle, and was attached, not 
to the side of the boat, but to the end of a conical 
piece of wood which projected almost a foot from the 
side of the vessel, and almost two feet from the stern. 
This piece of wood was bored down its length, and 
no doubt a rope passing through it secured the rud- 
der to the ship's side. It was steered by a tiller at- 
tached to the handle, and perhaps also by a rope 
fastened to the blade. As a whole, this disinterred 
vessel proved to be anything but the rude and primi- 
tive craft which might have been expected; it was 
neatly built and well preserved, constructed on what 
a sailor would call beautiful lines, and eminently 
fitted for sea service. Many such vessels may be 
found depicted on the celebrated Bayeux tapestry; 
and the peculiar position of the rudder explains the 
treaty mentioned in the Heimskringla, giving to Nor- 

31 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

way all lands lying west of Scotland between which 
and the main-land a vessel could pass with her rudder 
shipped. 

The vessel thus described is preserved at Chris- 
tiania. It was not one of the very largest ships, for 
some of them had thirty oars on each side, and ves- 
sels carrying from twenty to twenty-five were not 
uncomrnon. The largest of these were called Drag- 
ons, and other sizes were known as Serpents or 
Cranes. The ship itself was often so built as to 
represent the name it bore : the dragon, for instance, 
was a long, low vessel, with the gilded head of a drag- 
on at the bow, and the gilded tail at the stern; the 
moving oars at the side might represent the legs of 
the imaginary creature, the row of shining red and 
white shields that were hung over the gunwale looked 
like the monster's scales, and the sails striped with 
red and blue might suggest his wings. The ship pre- 
served at Christiania is described as having had but a 
single mast, set into a block of wood so large that it 
is said no such block could now be cut in Norway. 
Probably the sail was much like those still carried 
by large open boats in that country — a single square 
sail on a mast some forty feet long. These masts 
have no standing rigging, and are taken down when 
not in use ; and this was probably the practice of the 
Vikings. 

In case of danger these sea-rovers trusted chiefly to 
their oars. Once, when King Harald's fleet was on 
its way back to Norway with plunder from Denmark, 
the vessels lay all night at anchor in the fog, and 
when the sun pierced the fog in the morning it seemed 
as if many lights were burning in the sea. Then 
Harald said: "It is a fleet of Danish ships, and the 

32 



W HEN THE VI K I N G S CAME 

sun strikes on the gilded dragon-heads: furl the sail, 
and take to the oars." The Norse ships were heavy 
with plunder, while the Danish ships were light. 
Harald first threw overboard light wood, and placed 
upon it clothing and goods of the Danes, that they 
might see them and pick them up ; then he threw over- 
board his provisions, and lastly his prisoners. The 
Danes stopped for these, and the Norwegians got off 
with the rest. It was only the chance of war that 
saved the fugitives ; had they risked a battle and lost 
it, they would have been captured, killed, or drowned. 
Yet it was not easy to drown them ; they rarely went 
far from shore, and they were, moreover, swimmers 
from childhood, even in the icy waters of the North, 
and they had the art, in swimming, of hiding their 
heads beneath their floating shields, so that it was 
hard to find them. They were full of devices. It is 
recorded of one of them, for instance, that he always 
carried tinder in a walnut shell, enclosed in a ball of 
wax, so that, no matter how long submerged, he 
could make a fire on reaching shore. 

How were these rovers armed and dressed ? They 
fought with stones, arrows, and spears; they had 
grappling-irons on board, with which to draw other 
vessels to them; and the fighting-men were posted 
on the high bows and sterns, which sometimes had 
scaffoldings or even castles on them, so that missiles 
could be thrown down on other vessels. As to their 
appearance on land, it is recorded that when Sweinke 
and his five hundred men came to a "thing," or 
council, in Norway, all were clad in iron, with their 
weapons bright, and they were so well armed that 
they looked like pieces of shining ice. Other men 
present were clad in leathern cloaks, with halberds on 
3 33 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

their shoulders and steel caps on their heads. Si- 
gurd, the king's messenger, wore a scarlet coat and 
a blue coat over it, and he rose and told Sweinke 
that unless he obeyed the king's orders he should 
be driven out of the country. Then Sweinke rose, 
threw off his steel helmet, and retorted on him : 

"Thou useless fellow, with a coat without arms and a 
kirtle with skirts, wilt thou drive me out of the country? 
Formerly thou wast not so mighty, and thy pride was less 
when King Hakon, my foster-son, was in life. Then thou 
wast as frightened as a mouse in a mouse-trap, and hid 
thyself under a heap of clothes, like a dog on board of a 
ship. Thou wast thrust into a leather bag like corn into 
a sack, and driven from house to farm like a year-old colt; 
and dost thou dare to drive me from the land ? Let us 
stand up and attack him!" 

Then they attacked, and Sigurd escaped with great 
difficulty. 

The leaders and kings wore often rich and costly 
garments. When King Magnus landed in Ireland, 
with his marshal Eyvind, to carry away cattle, he 
had a helmet on his head, a red shield in which was 
inlaid a gilded lion, and was girt with the sword 
"Legbiter," of which the hilt was of tooth (ivory), 
and the hand-grip wound about with gold thread, 
and the sword was extremely sharp. "In his hand 
he had a short spear, and a red silk short cloak over 
his coat, on which, both before and behind, was em- 
broidered a lion in yellow silk, and all men acknowl- 
edged that they had never seen a brisker, statelier 
man. Eyvind had also a red silk coat like the king's, 
and he also was a stout, handsome, warlike man." 
But the ascendency of the chief did not come from 
his garments ; it consisted in personal power of mind 

34 



WHEN THE VIKINGS CAME 

and prowess of body, and when these decayed the 
command was gone. Such were the fierce, frank 
men who, as is claimed, stretched their wanderings 
over the western sea, and at last reached Vinland — 
that is to say, the continent of North America. 

What led the Northmen to this continent ? A triv- 
ial circumstance first drew them westward, after they 
had already colonized Iceland and made it their home. 
Those who have visited the Smithsonian Institution 
at Washington will remember the great carved door- 
posts, ornamented with heads, which are used by the 
Indians of the northwest coasts. It is to a pair of 
posts somewhat like these, called by the Northmen 
setstokka, or seat-posts, that we owe the discovery 
of Greenland, and afterwards of Vinland. When the 
Northmen removed from one place to another, they 
threw these seat-posts into the sea on approaching 
the shore, and wherever the posts -went aground there 
they dwelt. Erik the Red, a wandering Norseman 
who was dwelling in Iceland, had lent his posts to a 
friend, and could not get them back. This led to a 
quarrel, and Erik was declared an outlaw. He went 
to sea and discovered Greenland, which he thus 
called because, he said, "people will be attracted 
thither if the land has a good name." There he took 
up his abode, leading a colony with him, about a.d. 
986, fifteen years before Christianity was established 
by law in Iceland. The colony prospered, and there 
is evidence that the climate of Greenland was then 
milder and that it supported a far larger population 
than now. The ruined churches of Greenland still 
testify to a period of prosperity quite beyond the 
present. 

With Erik the Red went a man named Heriulf 

35 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

Bardson. Biarni, or Bjarni, this Heriulf's son, was 
absent from home when they left; he was himself a 
rover, but had always spent his winters with his 
father, and resolved to follow him to Greenland, 
though he warned his men that the voyage was im- 
prudent, since none of them had sailed in those seas. 
He sailed westward, was lost in fogs, and at last came 
to a land with small hills covered with wood. This 
could not, he thought, be Greenland; so he turned 
about, and, leaving this land to larboard, "let the foot 
of the sail look towards land," that is, sailed away 
from land. He came to another land, flat and still 
wooded. Then he sailed seaward with a southwest 
wind for two days, when they saw another land, but 
thought it could not be Greenland because there 
were no glaciers. The sailors wished to land for 
wood and water, but Bjarni would not — "but he got 
some hard speeches for that from his sailors," the 
saga, or legend, says. Then they sailed out to sea 
with a southwest wind for three days, and saw a 
third land, mountainous and with glaciers, and seem- 
ing to be an island ; and after this they sailed four 
days more, and reached Greenland, where Bjarni 
found his father, and lived with him ever after. 

But it seems that the adventurous countrymen of 
Bjarni were quite displeased with him for not ex- 
ploring farther ; and at last a daring man named Leif 
iDought Bjarni' s ship, and set sail, with thirty-five 
companions, to explore southward and westward. 
First they reached the land which Bjarni had last 
seen, the high island with the glaciers, and this they 
called Helluland, or "Flat-stone Land." Then they 
came to another land which they called Marckland, 
or "Woodland." Then they sailed two days with a 

36 



WHEN THE VIKINGS CAME 

northeast wind, and came to land with an island 
north of it; and, landing on this island, they found 
sweet dew on the grass, which has been explained as 
the honey-dew sometimes left by an insect called 
aphis. This pleased them, like great boys as they 
were; then they sailed between the island and the 
land; then the ship ran aground, but was at last 
lifted by the tide, when they sailed up a river and 
into a lake ; and there they cast anchor, and brought 
their sleeping-cots on shore and remained a long 
time. 

They built houses there and spent the winter ; there 
were salmon in the lake, the winter was very mild, and 
day and night were more equal than in Greenland. 
They explored the land, and one day a man of their 
number, Leif's foster-brother, named Tyrker, came 
from a long expedition and told Leif , in great excite- 
ment, that he had some news for him ; he had found 
grape-vines and grapes. "Can that be true, my 
foster-brother?" said Leif. "Surely it is true," he 
said, "for I was brought up where there is no want 
of grape-vines and grapes" — he being a German. 
The next day they filled their long-boat with grapes, 
and in the spring they sailed back to Greenland with 
a ship's load of tree-trunks — much needed there — 
and with the news of the newly discovered land, 
called Vinland, or " Wine-land." Leif was ever after 
known as "Leif the Lucky," from this success. 

But still the Norsemen in Greenland thought the 
new region had been too little explored, so Thorwald, 
Leif's brother, took the same ship, and made a third 
trip, with thirty men. He reached the huts the 
other party had built, called in the legends Leifsbudir, 
or "Leif's booths." They spent two winters there, 

37 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

fishing and exploring, and in the second summer their 
ship was aground under a ness, or cape, to the north- 
ward, and they had to repair it. The broken keel 
they set up on the ness as a memorial, and called it 
Kialarness. Afterwards they saw some of the na- 
tives for the first time, and killed all but one, in their 
savage way. Soon after there came forth from a 
bay "innumerable skin-boats," and attacked them. 
The men on board were what they called " Skraelings," 
or dwarfs, and they fought with arrows, one of which 
killed Thorwald, and he was buried, with a cross at the 
head of his grave, on a cape which they called Krossa- 
ness, or "Cross Cape." The saga reminds us that 
" Greenland was then Christianized, but Erik the Red 
had died before Christianity came thither." 

Thorwald' s men went back to Greenland without 
him, their ship being loaded with grape-vines and 
grapes. The next expedition to Vinland was a much 
larger one, headed by a rich man from Norway named 
Karlsefne, who had dwelt with Leif in Greenland, 
and had been persuaded to come on this enterprise. 
He brought a colony of sixty men and five women, 
and they had cattle and provisions. They found a 
place where a river ran out from the land, and through 
a lake into the sea ; one could not enter from the sea 
except at high -water. They found vines growing 
and fields of wild wheat ; there were fish in the lake 
and wild beasts in the woods. Here they established 
themselves at a place called Hop, from the Icelandic 
word hopa, to recede, meaning an inlet from the 
ocean. Here they dwelt, and during the first sum- 
mer the natives came in skin-boats to trade with them 
— a race described as black and ill-favored, with large 
eyes and broad cheeks and with coarse hair on their 

38 



WHEN THE VIKINGS CAME 

heads. On their first landing these visitors passed 
near the cattle, and were so frightened by the bellow- 
ing of the bull that they ran away again. The na- 
tives brought all sorts of furs to sell, and wished for 
weapons, but those were refused by Karlsefne, who 
had a more profitable project, which the legends thus 
describe: "He took this plan — he bade the women 
bring out their dairy stuff for them [milk, butter, and 
the like], and so soon as the Skraelings saw this they 
would have that and nothing more. Now this was 
the way the Skraelings traded: they bore off their 
wares in their stomachs, but Karlsefne and his com- 
panions had their bags and skin wares, and so they 
parted." This happened again, and then one of the 
Norsemen killed a native, so that the next time they 
came as enemies, armed with slings and raising upon 
a pole a great blue ball, which they swung at the 
Norsemen with great noise. It may have been only 
an Eskimo harpoon with a bladder attached, but it 
had its effect ; the Norsemen were terrified and were 
running away, when a woman named Freydis, daugh- 
ter of Erik the Red, stopped them by her reproaches, 
and urged them on. "Why do ye run," she said, 
" stout men as ye are, before these miserable wretches, 
whom I thought ye would knock down like cattle? 
If I had weapons methinks I could fight better than 
any of you." With this she took up a sword that 
lay beside a dead man, the fight was renewed, and 
the Skraelings were beaten off. 

There is a curious account of one "large and hand- 
some man," who seemed to be the leader of the 
Skraelings. One of the natives took up an axe, a 
thing which he had apparently never seen before, 
and struck at one of his companions and killed him. 

39 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

Upon which this leader took the axe and threw it 
into the sea in terror, and after this they all retreat- 
ed and came no more. Karlsefne's wife had a child 
that winter who was called Snorri, and the child is 
said to have been the ancestor of some famous Scan- 
dinavians, including Thorwaldsen the sculptor. But 
in spring they all returned to Greenland with a load 
of valuable timber, and thence went to Iceland, so 
that Snorri grew up there and his children after him. 
One more attempt was made to colonize Vinland, 
but it failed through the selfishness of a woman who 
had organized it — the same Freydis who had shown 
so much courage, but who was also cruel and grasp- 
ing; and after her return to Greenland, perhaps in 
1 013, we hear no more of Vinland, except as a thing 
of the past. 

There are full accounts of all these events, from 
manuscripts of good authority, preserved in Iceland ; 
the chief narratives being the saga of Erik the Red 
and the Karlsefne saga, the one having been written 
in Greenland, the other in Iceland. These have been 
repeatedly translated into various languages. There 
are half a dozen other references of undoubted au- 
thority in later Norse manuscripts to "Vinland the 
Good" as a region well authenticated. Mingled with 
these are other allusions to a still dimmer and more 
shadowy land beyond Vinland, and called "White- 
man's Land," or "Ireland the Mickle," a land said 
to be inhabited by men in white garments, who 
raised flags or poles. But this is too remote and un- 
certain to be seriously described. 

Such is the Norse legend of the visit of the Vikings ; 
but to tell the tale in its present form gives very 
httle impression of the startling surprise with 

40 



W HEN THE V I K I N ( J S CAM E 

which it came before the community of scholars. 
It was not a new story to the Scandinavian schol- 
ars: the learned antiquary Torfaeus knew almost 
as much about it in 1707 as we know to-day. 
But when Professor Rafn pubhshed, in 1837, his 
great folio volume in half a dozen different lan- 
guages, he thought he knew a great deal more 
about the whole affair than was actually the case, 
for he mingled the Norse legend with the Dighton 
Rock and the Old Mill at Newport, and with other 
alleged memorials of the Northmen in America — 
matters which have since turned out to be no me- 
morials at all. The great volume of Antiqnitates 
Americana: contains no less than twelve separate en- 
gravings of the Dighton Rock, some of them so un- 
like one another that it seems impossible that they 
can have been taken from the same inscription. Out 
of some of them Dr. Rafn found no difficulty in de- 
ciphering the name of Thorfinn and the figures 
CXXXI, being the number of Thorwald's party. Dr. 
T. A. Webb, then secretary of the Rhode Island His- 
torical Society, supplied also half a dozen other in- 
scriptions from rocks in IMassachusetts and Rhode 
Island, which are duly figured in the great folio; and 
another member of the Danish Historical Society, 
taking Dr. Webb's statements as a basis, expanded 
them with what seems like deliberate ingenuity, but 
was more likely simple blundering. Dr. Webb stated, 
for instance, that there were "in the western part of 
our country numerous and extensive mounds, simi- 
lar to the tumuli that are so often met with in Scandi- 
navia, Russia, and Tartary, also the remains of for- 
tifications, etc." Beamish, with the usual vague 
notion of Europeans as to American geography, sub- 

41 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

stituted "county" for "country," and then assigned 
all these vast remains to ' ' the western part of the 
county of Bristol, in the State of Massachusetts." 
And the same writer, with still bolder enterprise, 
carrying his imaginary traces of the Northmen into 
South America, gives a report of a huge column dis- 
covered near Bahia, in Brazil, bearing a colossal fig- 
ure with the hand pointing to the north pole. It 
was more than suspected from certain inscriptions, 
according to Beamish, that this also bore a Scandi- 
navian origin. 

For some reason or other the Old Mill at Newport 
did not play a prominent part in the great volume 
of Professor Rafn, but he published a pamphlet at 
Copenhagen in 1841, under the name of Americas 
Opdagelse, containing a briefer account of the dis- 
coveries, and this contains no less than seven full- 
page engravings of the Newport structure, all in- 
tended to prove its Norse origin. But all these fan- 
cies are now swept away. The Norse origin of the Old 
Mill has found no scientific supporters since the Rev. 
C. T. Brooks and Dr. John Gorham Palfrey showed 
that there was just such a mill at Chesterton, Eng- 
land, the very region from which Governor Benedict 
Arnold came, who, in his will, made in 1678, spoke 
of the Newport building as "my stone-built wind- 
mill," and who undoubtedly copied its structure from 
the building remembered from his boyhood. 

The Norse origin claimed for the Dighton Rock has 
also been set aside in a somewhat similar way. So 
long as men believed with Dr. Webb that " nowhere 
throughout our wide-spread domain is a single in- 
stance of their [the Indians] having recorded their 
deeds or history on stone," it was quite natural to 

42 



WHEN THE VIKINGS CAME 

look to some unknown race for the origin of this 
single inscription. But now, when the volumes of 
western exploration and the reports of the Bureau 
of Ethnology are full of inscriptions whose Indian 
origin is undoubted, this view has disappeared. If 
we compare a representation of the Dighton Rock, as 
it now appears, and one of the Indian inscriptions 
transcribed in New Mexico by Lieutenant Simpson, 
we can hardly doubt that the two had essentially a 
common origin. There are the same crudely exe- 
cuted and elongated human figures, and the same 
series of crosses, easily interpreted, when horizontal, 
into letters and figures. 

All these supposed Norse remains being ruled out 
of the question, we must draw our whole evidence 
from the Norse sagas themselves. On this part of 
the subject, also, there is now a general consent of 
experts. There can scarcely be a doubt that the 
Norsemen at an early period not only settled in 
Greenland, but visited lands beyond Greenland, which 
lands could only have been a part of the continent 
of North America. This Bancroft himself concedes 
as probable. It is true that this conclusion rests on 
the sagas alone, and that these were simple oral tra- 
ditions, written down perhaps two centuries after 
the events, while the oldest existing manuscripts are 
dated two centuries later still. Most of the early 
history of northern Europe, however, and of England 
itself, rests upon very similar authority; and there 
is no reason to set this kind of testimony aside m^erely 
because it relates to America. But when we come 
to fix the precise topography of their explorations, 
we have very few data left after the Dighton Rock 
and the Newport Mill are struck out of the evidence. 

43 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

We can argue nothing from the rate of sailing, for 
we do not know how often the travellers sailed all 
night, and how often they followed the usual Norse 
method of anchoring at dark. Little w^eight is now 
attached to the alleged astronomical calculation in 
the sagas, to the effect that in Vinland, on the short- 
est day, the sun rose at half-past seven and set at 
half-past four, w^hich would show the place to have 
been somewhere in the neighborhood of Mount Hope 
Bay. Closer observation has shown that no such as- 
sertion as that here made is to be found in the Norse 
narrative. The Norsemen did not divide their time 
into days and hours, but, like sailors, into "watches." 
A watch included three hours, and the legends only 
say that the sun rose, on that day, within the watch 
called " Dagmalastad," and set in that called " Eyk- 
tarstad" ("Sol hovdi thar Eyktarstad ok Dagmala- 
stad um Skamdegi "). This fact greatly impressed the 
Norse imagination, as in Iceland it rose and set with- 
in one .and the same watch. But this gives no means 
for any precise calculation, inasmuch as there is a 
range of six hours between the longest and the short- 
est estimate that might be founded upon it. As a 
consequence, Rafn's calculation puts Vinland about 
the latitu'de of 41°, or Mount Hope Bay, while Tor- 
faeus places it about 49°, or near Newfoundland. It 
is, after all, as has been remarked by Dr. William 
Everett, about as definite as if the sagas had told us 
that in Vinland daylight lasted from breakfast-time 
till the middle of the afternoon. 

The argument founded on climate is inconclusive 
and contradictory. Wild grapes grow in Rhode Isl- 
and, and they also grow in Canada and Nova Scotia. 
The Northmen found no frost during their first winter 

44 



WHEN THE VIKINGS CAME 

in Vinland ; but it is also recorded that in Iceland dur- 
ing a certain winter there was no snow. If the cli- 
mate of Greenland was milder in those days, so it 
may have been with Labrador. Coincidences of name 
amount to almost as little. The name of Wood's 
Hole, on the coast of Massachusetts, was for a time 
altered to AVood's Holl, to correspond to the Norse 
naine for hill. Mount Hope Bay, commonly derived 
from the Indian Montaup, has been carried further 
back, and has been claimed to represent the Hop 
where Leif's booths were built, although the same 
Indian word occurs in many other places. All his- 
tory shows that nothing is less to be relied upon than 
these analogies. How unanswerable seemed the sug- 
gestion of the old traveller Howell that the words 
"elf" and "goblin" represented the long strife be- 
tween Guelf and Ghibelline in Italy, until it turned 
out that "elf" and "goblin" were much the older 
words ! 

There are scarcely two interpreters who agree as 
to the places visited by the Northmen, and those who 
are surest in their opinions are usually those who live 
farthest from the points described. Professor Rafn 
and Professor Horsford found Vinland along the coast 
of New England; Professor Rask, the former's con- 
temporary, found it in Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, or 
Labrador. The latter urged, w4th much reason, that 
it was far easier to discover wild grapes in Nova 
Scotia than to meet Eskimo in what is now Rhode 
Island; and that the whole story of the terror of the 
Skraelings before the bull indicates an island people 
like those of Newfoundland or Prince Edward Isl- 
and, and certainly not the New England Indians, 
who were familiar with the moose, and might have 

45 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

seen the buffalo. He might also have added, what 
was first pointed out by J. Elliot Cabot, that the re- 
peated voyages from Greenland to Vinland, and the 
perfect facility with which successive explorers found 
the newly discovered region, indicate some spot much 
nearer Greenland than Mount Hope Bay, which would 
have required six hundred miles of intricate and dan- 
gerous coast navigation, without chart or compass, 
in order to reach it. Again, Rafn finds it easy to 
place the site of Leif's booths at Bristol, Rhode Isl- 
and, and M. Gravier, a Frenchman, writing in 1874, 
has not a doubt upon the subject. But a sail from 
Fall River to Newport, or, indeed, a mere study of the 
map, will show any dispassionate person that the 
description given by the sagas has hardly anything 
in common with the Rhode Island locality. The 
sagas describe an inland lake communicating with 
the sea by a shallow river only accessible at high-tide, 
whereas Mount Hope Bay is a broad expanse of salt 
water opening into the still wider gulf of Narragansett 
Bay, and communicating with the sea by a passage 
wide and deep enough for the navies of the world to 
enter. Even supposing the Northmen to have found 
their way in through what is called the Seaconnet 
Passage, the description does not apply much better 
to that. Even if it did, these hardy sailors must 
have recognized, the moment they reached the bay 
itself, that they had come in at the back door, not at 
the front ; and the main access to the ocean must in- 
stantly have revealed itself. The whole interpreta- 
tion, which seems so easy to transatlantic writers, is 
utterly rejected by Professor Henry Mitchell, some- 
time director of the Coast Survey. And the same 
vagueness and indefiniteness mark all the descriptions 

46 



WHEN THE VIKINGS CAME 

of the Northmen. Nothing is more difficult than to 
depict in words with any accuracy in an unscientific 
age the features of a low and monotonous sea-shore; 
and this, with the changes undergone by the coast 
of southern New England during nine hundred years, 
renders the identification of any spot visited by the 
Northmen practically impossible. 

The Maine Historical Society has reprinted a map 
of the North Atlantic made by the Icelander Sigurd 
Stephanius in the year 1570, and preserved by the 




NORTH ATLANTIC, BY THE ICELANDER SIGURD 
STEPHANIUS, IN 1570 



Scandinavian historian Torfaeus in his Gronlandia 
Antiqua (1706). In this map all that is south of 
Greenland, including Vinland, is a part of one conti- 
nent. Helluland and Marckland appear upon it, and 

47 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

Vinland is a promontory extending forth from the land 
of the Skraelings. But whether this abrupt cape is 
meant to represent Cape Cod, as some would urge, or 
the far more conspicuous headlands of Newfoundland 
or Nova Scotia, must be left to conjecture. The fact 
that it is in the same latitude with the southern part of 
England would indicate the more northern situation ; 
and it is to be noted that all these promontories are 
depicted as mountainous — a character which the 
Northmen, accustomed to the heights of Iceland and 
Greenland, could hardly have applied to what must 
have seemed to them the trivial elevations of Cape 
Cod or Mount Hope Bay. A sand-hill two hundred 
feet high would hardly have done duty for a moun- 
tain on a map made in Iceland. But the chaotic 
geography of the whole map — in which England is 
thrown out into mid - ocean, Iceland appears nearly 
as large as England, one of the Shetland Islands is 
as large as Ireland, and the imaginary island of Fris- 
land is fully displayed — affords a sufficient warning 
against taking too literally any details contained in 
the sagas. If learned Icelanders were so utterly un- 
able, five centuries later, to depict the Europe which 
they knew so well, how could their less - learned an- 
cestors have given any accurate topography of the 
America which they knew so little? They did not 
give it; but the same activity of imagination which 
enabled Professor Rafn to find the name of Thorwald 
in an Indian inscription might well permit him to 
identify Krossaness with Sound Point and Vinland 
with Nantucket. 

Unless authentic Norse remains are hereafter un- 
earthed, there is very little hope of ever identifying 
a single spot where the Vikings landed or a single in- 

48 



WHEN THE VIKINGS CAME 

let ever furrowed by their keels. But that these bold 
rovers in sailing westward discovered lands beyond 
Greenland is as sure as anything can be that rests on 
sagas and traditions only — as sure, that is, as most 
things in the earliest annals of Europe. They dis- 
covered America; what part of America is of little 
consequence. They discovered it without clear in- 
tention and by a series of what might almost be 
called coasting voyages, stretching from Norway to 
Scotland, from Scotland to Iceland, and thence to 
Greenland, and at last to the North American conti- 
nent, each passage extending but a few hundred miles, 
though those miles lay through stormy and icy seas. 
They made these discoveries simply as adventurers. 
There is nothing in their achievement worthy to be 
compared with the great deed of Columbus, when he 
formed with deliberate dignity a heroic purpose and 
set sail across an unknown sea upon the faith of a 
conviction. As compared with him and his com- 
panions, the Vikings seem but boys beside men. 



Ill 

THE SPANISH DISCOVERERS 

ABOUT 1854 Mr. Kinney, the American minister 
L at the court of Turin, was conversing with a 
young ItaHan of high rank from the island of Sar- 
dinia, who had come to Turin for education. This 
young man remarked that he had lately heard about 
a great Spanish or Italian navigator who had sailed 
westward from Spain, in the latter part of the fif- 
teenth century, with the hope of making discoveries. 
Did Mr. Kinney know what had become of that ad- 
venturer — had he been heard of again, and, if so, what 
had he accomplished ? This, it seemed, was all that 
was known in Sardinia respecting the fame and deeds 
of Columbus. The world at large is a little better off, 
and can at least tell what Columbus found. But 
whether he really first found it, and is entitled to the 
name of discoverer, has of late been treated as an un- 
settled question. He long since lost the opportu- 
nity of giving his name to the new continent ; there 
have been hot disputes as to whether he really first 
reached it. It has even been doubted whether there 
ever was such a person as Columbus at all. 

What does discovery mean ? in what does it consist ? 
If the Vikings had already visited the American 
shore, could it be rediscovered ? Was it not easy for 
Columbus to visit Iceland, to hear the legends of the 

50 



THE SPANISH DISCOVERERS 

Vikings, and to follow in their path? These are 
questions that have been often asked. The answer 
is that Columbus may have visited Iceland, possibly 
heard the Viking legends, but certainly did not fol- 
low in the path they indicated. To follow them would 
have been to make a series of successive voyages, as 
they did, each a sort of coasting trip, from Norway 
to Iceland, from Iceland to Greenland, from Green- 
land to Vinland. To follow them would have been 
to steer north-northwest, whereas his glory lies in the 
fact that he sailed due west into the open sea and 
found America. His will begins, "In the name of 
the Most Holy Trinity, who inspired me with the idea, 
and afterwards confirmed me in it, that by travers- 
ing the ocean westwardly ," etc. "Thus accurately did 
he state his own title to fame. So far as climate and 
weather were concerned, he actually incurred less 
risk than the Northmen; but when we consider that 
he sailed directly out across an unknown ocean on 
the faith of a theory, his deed was incomparably 
greater. 

There is one strong reason for believing that Co- 
lumbus knew but vaguely of the Norse voyages, or did 
not know of them at all, or did not connect the Vinland 
they found with the India he sought. This is a 
fact, that he never, so far as we know, used their 
success as an argument in trying to persuade other 
people. For eight years, by his own statement, he 
was endeavoring to convert men to his project. " For 
eight years," he says, " I was torn with disputes, and 
my project was matter of mockery" {cosa de hiirla). 
During this time he never made one convert among 
those best qualified, through either theory or prac- 
tice, to form an opinion — "not a pilot, nor a sailor, 

SI 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

nor a philosopher, nor any kind of scientific man," 
he says, "put any faith in it." Now these were 
precisely the men whom the story of Vinland, if he 
had been able to quote it, might have convinced. 
The fact that they were not convinced shows that 
they were not told the story; and if Columbus did 
not tell it, the reason must have been either that he 
did not know it or did not attach much weight to 
it. He would have told it if only to shorten his own 
labor in argument; for in converting practical men 
an ounce of Vinland would have been worth a pound 
of cosmography. Certainly he knew how to deal 
with individual minds, and he could well adapt his 
arguments to each one. The way in which he man- 
aged his sailors on his voyage shows that he sought 
all manner of means to command confidence. He 
would have treated his hearers to all the tales in the 
sagas if that would have helped the matter; the 
Skraelings and the unipeds, or one-legged men, of 
the Norse legends would have been discussed by 
many a Genoese or Portuguese fireside; and Colum- 
bus might never have needed to trouble Ferdinand 
and Isabella with his tale. We may safely assume 
that if he knew the traditions about Vinland, they 
made no special impression on his mind. 

Why should they have made much impression? 
The Northmen themselves had had five hundred 
years to forget Vinland, and had employed the time 
pretty effectually for that purpose. None of them 
had continued to go there. Even if it met the ears 
of Columbus, Vinland may well have seemed but one 
more island in the northern seas, and very remote 
indeed from that gorgeous India which Marco Polo 
had described, and which was the subject of so many 

52 



THE SPANISH DISCOVERERS 

dreams. More than all, Columbus was a man of ab- 
stract thought, whose nature it was to proceed upon 
theories, and he fortified himself with the traditions 
of philosophers, authorities of whom the Northmen 
had never heard. That one saying of the cosmog- 
rapher Aliaco, quoting Aristotle, had more weight 
with one like Columbus than a ship's crew of Vikings 
would have had: "Aristotle holds that there is but a 
narrow sea {parviim mare) between the western points 
of Spain and the eastern border of India." Ferdi- 
nand Columbus tells us how much influence that sen- 
tence had with his father ; but we should have known 
it at any rate. 

When he finally set sail (August 3, 1492), it was 
with the distinct knowledge that he should have a 
hard time of it unless Aristotle's "narrow sea" proved 
very narrow indeed. Instead of extending his knowl- 
edge to the sailors and to the young adventurers who 
sailed with him, he must keep them in the dark, 
must mislead them about the variations of the mag- 
netic needle, and must keep a double log-book of his 
daily progress, putting down the actual distance 
sailed, and then a smaller distance to tell the men, 
in order to prevent them from being more homesick 
than the day before. It was hard enough, at any 
rate. The sea into which they sailed was known as 
the Sea of Darkness — Alare Tenehrosiini, the Bahral- 
Ziilmat of the Arabians. It had been described by 
an Arab geographer a century before as "a vast and 
boundless ocean, on which ships dare not venture 
out of sight of land, for even if they knew the direc- 
tion of the winds, they would not know whither those 
winds would carry them, and as there is no inhabited 
country beyond, they would run great risk of being 

53 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

lost in mist and vapor." We must remember that 
at that period the telescope and quadrant were not 
yet invented, and the Copernican system was undis- 
covered. It was a time when the compass itself was 
so imperfectly known that its variations were not rec- 
ognized; when Mercator's system of charts, now held 
so essential to the use even of the compass, were not 
devised. The compass was of itself an object of 
dread among the ignorant, as being connected with 
enchantment. One of its Spanish names, bruxida, was 
derived from bruxo, a sorcerer. 

No one knew the exact shape of the earth; Colum- 
bus believed in his third voyage that it was pear- 
shaped. Somewhere near the stalk of the pear, he 
thought, was the Earthly Paradise; somewhere else 
there was Chaos, or Erebus. As to the size of the 
earth, that was wholly underestimated, else no one 
could have believed that the ocean which lay west 
of Europe was the same that lay east of Asia. In 
sailing over those waters, no one knew what a day 
might bring forth. Above them, it was thought by 
some, hovered the gigantic bird known as the roc — 
familiar to the readers of Sindhad the Sailor — which 
was large enough to grasp a ship with all its crew 
and fly away with it into upper air. Columbus him- 
self described three mermaids, and reported men 
with tails, men with dogs' heads, and one-eyed men. 
In the history of Peter Martyr, one of those who first 
recorded the discoveries of Columbus, the innocent 
cetacean called the manatee became a half -mythologi- 
cal monster covered with knobbed scales and with a 
head like an ox; it could carry a dozen men on its 
back, and was kind and gentle to all but Christians, 
to whom it had an especial aversion. Philoponus 

54 



THE SPANISH DISCOVERERS 

has delineated the manatee, and De Bry has pictured 
the imaginary beings that Columbus saw. 

The old maps peopled the ocean depths with yet 
more frightful and mysterious figures; and the Arab 
geographers, prohibited by their religion from por- 
traying animals real or imaginary, supplied their 
place by images even more terrific, as that of the 
black and clinched hand of Satan rising above the 
waves in the guise of an overhanging rock, and ready 
to grasp the daring sailors who profaned the Sea of 
Darkness with their presence. When we think how 
superstition, gradually retiring from the world, still 
keeps its grasp upon the sailors of to-day, we can 
imagine how it must have ruled the ignorant seamen 
of Columbus. The thoughtful, lonely ways of their 
admiral made him only an object of terror; they 
yielded to him with wonderful submission, but it was 
the homage of fear. The terror reached its climax 
when they entered the vast "Sargasso Sea," a region 
of Gulf-weed — a tract of ocean as large as France, 
Humboldt says — through which they sailed. Here at 
last, they thought, was the home of all the monsters 
depicted in the charts, who might at any moment 
rear their distorted forms from the snaky sea-weed, 

"Like demons' endlong tresses, they sailed through." 

At the very best, they said, it was an inundated land 
(tierras anegadas) — probably the fabled sunken island 
Atlantis, of which they had heard, whose slime, tra- 
dition said, made it impossible to explore that sea, 
and on whose submerged shallows they might at any 
time be hopelessly swamped or entangled. "Are 
there no graves at home," they asked each other, ac- 

55 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

cording to Herrera, " that we should be brought here 
to die?" The trade-winds, afterwards called by the 
friars "winds of mercy," because they aided in the 
discovery of the New World, were only winds of de- 
spair to the sailors. They believed that the ships 
were sailing down an inclined slope, and that to re- 
turn would be impossible, since it blew always from 
home. There was little to do in the way of trim- 
ming sails, for they sailed almost on a parallel of lati- 
tude from the Canaries to the Bahamas. Their se- 
verest labor was in pumping out the leaky ships. The 
young adventurers remained listlessly on deck, or 
played the then fashionable ga.me of primero, and 
heard incredulously the daily reports told by Colum- 
bus of the rate of sailing. They would have been 
still more incredulous had they known the truth. 
"They sighed and wept," Herrera says, "and every 
hour seemed like a year." 

The same Spanish annalist compares Columbus to 
St. Christopher in the legend bearing the infant 
Christ across the stream on his shoulders; and the 
explorer was often painted in that character in those 
days. But the weight that Columbus had to bear up 
was a wearisome and unworthy load. Sometimes 
they plotted to throw him overboard by a manoeuvre 
{con disimulacion, Herrera says), intending to say 
that he fell in while star-gazing. But he, according 
to Peter Martyr, dealt with them now by winning 
words, now by encouraging their hopes {hlandis modo 
verbis, ampld spe modo). If they thought they saw 
land, he encouraged them to sing an anthem ; when 
it proved to be but cloud, he held out the hope of 
land to-morrow. They had sailed August 3, 1492, 
and when they had been out two months (October 

56 



THE SPANISH DISCOVERERS 

3d), he refused to beat about in search of land, though 
he thought they were near it, but he would press 
straight through to the Indies. Sometimes there 
came a contrary wind, and Columbus was cheered by 
it, for it would convince his men that the wind did 
not always blow one way, and that by patient wait- 
ing they could yet return to Spain. 

As the days went on, the signs of land increased, 
but very slowly. When we think of the intense im- 
patience of the passengers on an ocean steamer after 
they have been six or seven long days on the water, 
even though they know precisely where they are and 
where they are going, and that they are driven by 
mechanical forces stronger than winds or waves, we 
can imagine something of the feelings of Columbus 
and his crew as the third month wore on. Still there 
was no sign of hope but a pelican to-day and a crab 
to-morrow ; or a drizzling rain without wind — a com- 
bination which was supposed to indicate nearness to 
the shore. There has scarcely been a moment in the 
history of the race more full of solemn consequences 
than that evening hour when, after finding a carved 
stick and a hawthorn branch, Columbus watched 
from the deck in the momentary expectation of some 
glimpse of land. The first shore light is a signal of 
success and triumph to sailors who cross the Atlantic 
every two or three weeks. What, then, was it to the 
patient commander who was looking for the first 
gleam from an unknown world ? 

The picturesque old tale can never be told in better 
words than those in which the chronicler Herrera 
narrates it: "And Christopher Columbus, being now 
sure that he was not far off, as the night came on, 
after singing the 'Salve Regina,' as is usual with 

57 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

mariners, addressed them all and said that since God 
had given them grace to make so long a voyage in 
safety, and since the signs of land were becoming 
steadily more frequent, he would beg them to keep 
watch all night. And they knew well that the first 
chapter of the orders that he had issued to them on 
leaving Castile provided that after sailing seven hun- 
dred leagues without making land, they should only 
sail thenceforth from the following midnight to the 
next day; and that they should pass that time in 
prayer, because he trusted in God that during that 
night they should discover land. And that besides 
the ten thousand maravedis that their Highnesses 
had promised to him who should make the first dis- 
covery, he would give, for his part, a velvet jerkin." 
It seems like putting some confusion into men's 
minds to set them thinking at one and the same time 
of a new world and a velvet jerkin; but, after all, 
the prize was never awarded, for Columbus himself 
was the victor. The vessels of those days had often 
a high structure like a castle at bow and stem — 
whence our word forecastle for the forward part of 
the ship — and we can fancy the sailors and young 
adventurers watching from one of these while Colum- 
bus watched from the other. The admiral had the 
sharpest eyes or the highest outlook, and that night 
he saw a light which seemed to move on the dim 
horizon. He called to him Pedro Gutierrez, who 
saw it at once ; he called Roderigo Sanchez, who could 
not see it for some time; but at last all three per- 
ceived it beyond doubt. " It appeared like a candle 
that was raised and lowered. The admiral did not 
doubt its being a real light or its being on land ; and 
so it was : it was borne by people who were going from 

58 



THE SPANISH DISCOVERERS 

one cottage to another." "He saw that light in the 
midst of darkness," adds the devout Herrera, " which 
symboHzed the spirit and Hght which were to be 
introduced among these savages." This sight was 
seen at about ten o'clock in the evening; and at two 
o'clock in the morning land was actually seen from 
the Pinta, the foremost vessel, by a sailor, Rodrigo 
de Triana, who, poor fellow, never got the promised 
reward, and, as tradition says, went to Africa and 
became a Mohammedan in despair. 

The landing of Columbus has been commemorated 
by the fine design of Turner, engraved in Rogers' 
poems. Columbus wore complete armor, with crim- 
son over it, and carried in his hand the Spanish flag, 
with its ominous hues of gold and blood ; his captains 
bore each a banner with a green cross and the initials 
F. and Y. for "Ferdinand" and "Ysabel," sur- 
mounted by their respective crowns. They fell upon 
their knees; they chanted the "Te Deum," and then 
with due legal formalities took possession of the isl- 
and on behalf of the Spanish sovereigns. It was the 
island Guanahani, which Columbus rechristened San 
Salvador, but whose precise identity has always been 
a little doubtful. Navarrete identified it with Turk's 
Island ; Humboldt and Irving with Cat Island ; Captain 
Fox and Harrisse believe it to have been Acklin's 
Key; while Captain Becher, of the English Hydro- 
graphic Office, wrote a book to prove that it was 
Watling's Island; this view being the one now most 
generally accepted. It is a curious fact that the 
island which made the New World a certainty should 
itself remain uncertain of identification for four hun- 
dred years. 

With the glory and beauty of that entrance of 

59 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

European civilization on the American continent 
there came also the shame. Columbus saw and de- 
scribed the innocent happiness of the natives. They 
were no wild savages, no cruel barbarians. They 
had good faces, he says ; they neither carried nor un- 
derstood weapons, not even swords; they were gen- 
erous and courteous; "very gentle, without knowing 
what evil is, without killing, without stealing" (miiy 
mansos, y sin saber que sea nial, ni matar a otros, ni 
prender). They were poor, but their houses were 
clean ; and they had in them certain statues in female 
form, and certain heads in the shape of masks well 
executed. "I do not know," he says, in Navarrete's 
account, "whether these are employed for adorn- 
ment or worship" {per hermosura 6 adoran). The 
remains of Aztec and Maya civilization seem less ex- 
ceptional when we find among these first-seen aborig- 
ines the traces of a feeling for art. 

Columbus seems to have begun with that peculiar 
mixture of kindness and contempt which the best 
among civilized men are apt to show towards sav- 
ages. " Because," he said, " they showed much kind- 
liness for us, and because I knew that they would be 
more easily made Christians through love than fear, 
I gave to some of them some colored caps, and some 
strings of glass beads for their necks, and many other 
trifles, with which they were delighted, and were sc-i 
entirely ours that it was a marvel to see." There is 
a certain disproportion here between the motive and 
the action. These innocent savages gave him a new 
world for Castile and Leon, and he gave them some 
glass beads and little red caps. If this had been the 
worst of the bargain it would have been no great 
matter. The tragedv begins when we find this same 

60 



THE SPANISH DISCOVERERS 

high-minded admiral writing home to their Spanish 
Majesties in his very first letter that he shall be able 
to supply them with all the gold they need, with 
spices, cotton, mastic, aloes, rhubarb, cinnamon, and 
slaves; "slaves, as many of these idolators as their 
Highnesses shall command to be shipped" (esdavos 
quanta niandaran car gar y seran de los ydolatres). 
Thus ended the visions of those simple natives who, 
when the Europeans first arrived, had run from 
house to house, crying aloud, "Come, come and see 
the people from heaven" {la gente del cielo). Some 
of them lived to suspect that the bearded visitors 
had quite a different origin. 

But Columbus shared the cruel prejudices of his 
age; he only rose above its scientific ignorance. That 
was a fine answer made by him when asked, in the 
council called by King Ferdinand, how he knew that 
the western limit of the Atlantic was formed by the 
coasts of Asia. "If indeed," said he, "the Atlantic 
has other limits in that direction than the lands of 
Asia, it is no less necessary that they should be dis- 
covered, and I will discover them." He probably 
died without the knowledge that he had found a new 
continent, but this answer shows the true spirit of 
the great admiral. Columbus has been the subject 
of much discussion. He has been glorified into some- 
thing like sainthood by such Roman Catholic eulo- 
gists as Roselly de Lorges, has been attacked wath 
merciless vituperation by such writers as Goodrich, 
and has been searchingly criticised by such scholars 
as Justin Winsor; but time does not easily dim the 
essential greatness of the man. Through him the Old 
and New worlds were linked together for good or for 
evil, and, once united, they never could be separated. 

6i 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

There was another Spanish voyager whose name will 
always be closely joined with that of Columbus and 
who is still regarded by many persons as having un- 
justly defrauded his greater predecessor, inasmuch 
as it was he, not Columbus, who gave his name to the 
New World. Unlike Columbus, Amerigo Vespucci 
was never imprisoned, enchained, or impoverished, 
and was thus perhaps the happier of the two during 
his life, though Columbus himself wrote of him : " Fort- 
une has been adverse to him as she has to many 
others." Since his death his fate has been reversed, 
and he has suffered far more than Columbus at the 
hands of posterity. The very fact that his name was 
applied to the American continent caused many to 
regard him as but a base and malignant man. Ves- 
pucci's alleged voyage of 1497 was doubtless a fabri- 
cation, and he probably did not really reach the main- 
land of South America until 1499. Yet it is not unjust, 
after all, that his name should have been given to the 
continent, for he really was the first to attain and de- 
scribe it definitely, although it may justly be said that 
after Columbus had reached the outlying islands all 
else was but a question of time. 

The discoveries of Vespucci attracted much atten- 
tion in Germany, and it was a geographer named 
Waldseemuller who first printed, in 1507, one of his 
letters at the little town of St. Die, in Lorraine. This 
same author, believing " The Land of the Holy Cross" 
to be a new quarter of the globe discovered by Ves- 
pucci {alia quarta pars per Americanum Vespucinm . . . 
inventa), suggested, in a book called CosmographicB In- 
troducHo, and published in 1 507 , the year after the death 
of Columbus, that this new land should be named for 
Americus, since Europe and Asia had women's names 

62 



THE SPANISH DISCOVERERS 

{Amerigen quasi Americi terram sive Americam dicen- 
dam cum et Europa et Asia a mulierihns sua sortita sint 
nomina). It is curious to read this sentence in the 
quaint, clear type of that little book, copies of which 
may be found in the Harvard College library and in 
other American collections, and to think that every 
corner of this vast double continent now owes its 
name to what was perhaps a random suggestion of 
one obscure German. The use of the title gradually 
spread, after this suggestion, and apparently because 
it pleased the public ear; but no two geographers 
agreed as to the shape of the land it represented. 
Indeed, Waldseemiiller, a man who was not con- 
tent with one hard name for himself but must needs 
have two — being called in Latin Hylacomylus — 
seems not to have been quite sure what name the 
newly discovered lands should have, after all. Six 
years after he had suggested the name America, 
he printed (in 15 13) for an edition of Ptolemy a chart 
called "Tabula Terre Nove," on which the name of 
America does not appear, but there is represented a 
southern continent called "Terra Incognita," with 
an express inscription saying that it was discovered 
by Columbus. This shows in what an uncertain way 
the baptism was given. The earliest manuscript map 
yet known to bear the name " America" is in a collec- 
tion of drawings by Leonardo da Vinci, now preserved 
in England, this being probably made in 1 5 1 2-1 5 . It 
was published in the London ArchcBologia, and a por- 
tion of it is reproduced on the following page. The 
earliest engraved map bearing the name was made at 
Vienna in 1520. The globe of Johann Schoner, made 
in 1 5 1 5, and still preserved at Nuremberg, calls what is 
now Brazil, "America sive [or] Brazilia," thus doubt- 

63 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

fully recognizing the new name; and it gives what is 
now known to be the northern half of the continent 
as a separate island under the name of Cuba. It was 
many years before the whole was correctly figured 




DA VINCl's MAPPEMONDE 
(By permission of the Society of Antiquaries) 

and comprehended under one name. Every geog- 
rapher of those days distributed the supposed isl- 
ands or continents of the New World much as if he 
had thrown them from a dice-box ; and the royal per- 
sonages who received gold and slaves from these new 
regions generally cared very little to know the par- 
ticulars about them. The young, the ardent, and 

64 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

the reckless sought them for adventure; but their 
vague and barbarous wonders seemed to princes and 
statesmen very secondary matters compared with 
their own intrigues and treaties and royal marriages 
and endless wars. Vespucci himself may not have 
known when his name was first used for the baptism 
of his supposed discoveries. He was evidently one 
of those who have more greatness thrust upon them 
than they have ever claimed for themselves. 

Another of the great Spanish explorers was one 
who left Hispaniola, it is said, to avoid his creditors, 
and then left the world his debtor in Darien. Vasco 
Nufiez de Balboa deserves to be remembered as one 
who at least tried to govern the Indians with human- 
ity; yet even he could not resist putting them to the 
torture, by his own confession {dandd a unos tormento), 
in order to discover gold. But he will be better re- 
membered as the first civilized discoverer of the ocean 
that covers one-half the surface of the globe. Going 
forty leagues from Darien to visit an Indian chief 
named Comogre, the Spaniards received a sumptu- 
ous present of gold, and as they were quarrelling 
about it, the eldest son of the chief grew indignant 
at what he thought their childishness. Dashing the 
scales, gold and all, to the ground, he told them that 
he could show them a country rich enough in gold to 
satisfy all their greediness; that it lay by a sea on 
which there were ships almost as large as theirs, and 
that he could guide them thither if they had the cour- 
age. ' ' Our captains, ' ' says Peter IMartyr, ' ' marvelling 
at the oration of this naked young man, pondered in 
their minds, and earnestly considered these things." 

i\.t a later time Balboa not only considered, but 
acted, and with one hundred and ninety Spaniards, 

66 



THE SPANISH DISCOVERERS 

besides slaves and hounds, he fought his way through 
forests and over mountains southward. Coming 
near the mountain-top whence he might expect, as 
the Indians had assured him, to behold the sea, he 
bade his men sit upon the ground, that he alone 
might see it first. Then he looked upon it, 

"Silent upon a peak in Darien." 

Before him rolled "the Sea of the South," as it 
was then called (la Mar del Sur), it lying southward 
of the isthmus where he stood— as any map will 
show — and its vast northern sweep not yet being 
known. This was on September 25, 1513. On his 
knees Balboa thanked God for the glory of that mo- 
ment; then called his men, and after they also had 
given thanks, he addressed them, reminding them of 
what the naked prince had said, and pointing out 
that as the promise of the southern sea had been ful- 
filled, so might also that of the kingdom of gold — as 
it was, indeed, fulfilled shortly after in the discovery 
of Peru by Pizarro, who was one of his companions. 
Thati they sang the "Te Deum Laudamus," and a 
notary drew up a list of all those who were present, 
sixty-seven in all, that it might be known who had 
joined in the great achievement. Then Balboa took 
formal possession of the sea and all that was in it in be- 
half of Spain; he cut down trees, made crosses, and 
carved upon the tree trunks the names of Spanish 
kings. Descending to the sea., some days later, with 
his men, he entered it, with his sword on, and stand- 
ing up to his thighs in the water, declared that he 
would defend it against all comers as a possession of 
the throne of Spain. Meanwhile some of his men 

67 



HISTORY OP THE UNITED STATES 

found two Indian canoes, and for the first time float- 
ed on that unknown sea. To Balboa and his com- 
panions it was but a new avenue of conquest; and 
Peter Martyr compares him to Hannibal showing 
Italy to his soldiers (ingentes opes sociis pollicetur). 
But to us, who think of what that discovery was, it 
has a grandeur second only to the moment when Co- 
lumbus saw the light upon the shore. Columbus dis- 
covered what he thought was India, but Balboa 
proved that half the width of the globe still separated 
him from India. Columbus discovered a new land, 
but Balboa a new sea. Seven years later (1520), 
Magellan also reached it by sailing southward and 
passing through the straits that bear his name, giv- 
ing to the great tcean the name of Pacific, from the 
serene weather which met him on his voyage. 

I must not omit to mention one who was the first 
European visitor of Florida, except as Vespucci and 
others had traced the outline of its shores. Yet 
Ponce de Leon made himself immortal, not, like Co- 
lumbus, by what he dreamed and discovered, but by 
what he dreamed and never found. Even to have 
gone in search of the Fountain of Youth wa^an 
event that so arrested the human imagination as to 
have thrown a sort of halo around a man who cer- 
tainly never reached that goal. The story was first 
heard among the Indians of Cuba and Hispaniola, 
that on the island of Bimini, one of the Lucayos, 
there was a fountain in which aged men by bathing 
could renew their youth. The old English transla- 
tion of Peter Martyr describes this island as one ' ' in 
the which there is a continual spring of running 
water of such marvellous virtue that, the water there- 
of being drunk, perhaps with some diet, maketh old 

68 



THE SPANISH DISCOVERERS 

men young." Others added that on a neighboring 
shore there was a river of the same magical powers — ■ 
a river believed by many to be the Jordan. With these 
visions in his mind, Ponce de Leon, sailing in command 
of three brigantines from Porto Rico, where he had 
been Governor, touched the main-land, in the year 
1512, without knowing that he had arrived at it. 
First seeing it on Easter Sunday — a day which the 
Spaniards called Pascua Florida, or " Flowery Easter" 
— he gave this name to the newly discovered shore. 
He fancied it to be an island whose luxuriant beauty 
seemed to merit this glowing name — the Indian name 
having been Cantio. He explored its coast, landed 
near what is now St. Augustine, then returned home, 
and on the way delegated one of his captains, Juan 
Perez, to seek the island of Bimini and to search for 
the Fountain of Youth upon it. Perez reached the 
island, but achieved nothing more. 

Long after these days, Herrera tells us, both Ind- 
ians and Spaniards used to bathe themselves in the 
rivers and lakes of all that region, hoping to find the 
enchanted waters. Ponce de Leon once again visit- 
ed his supposed island, and was mortally wounded 
by Indians on its shores. He never found the Foun- 
tain of Youth, but he found Florida; and for the 
multitudes who now retreat from the northern win- 
ter to that blossoming region, it may seem that his 
early dreams were not so unfounded after all. 

The conquest of Mexico by Cortez revived anew the 
zeal of Spanish adventure, and a new expedition to 
Florida was organized which led ultimately to a new 
discovery — that of the first land route across the 
width, though not across the largest width, of North 
America. Alvar Nunez, commonly called Cabega de 

69 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

Vaca, sailed from Spain to Florida, in 1527, as treas- 
urer of an armada, or armed fleet. They probably 
landed at what is now called Charlotte Harbor, in 
Florida, where Cabega de Vaca and others left their 
ships and went into the interior as far as what is now 
Alabama. Then they were driven back in confu- 
sion, and reached the sea in utter destitution and 
helplessness. They wished to build ships and to get 
away; but they had neither knowledge nor tools nor 
iron nor forge nor tow nor resin nor rigging. Yet 
they made a bellows out of deer-skins, and saws out 
of stirrups, resin from pine-trees, sails from their 
shirts, and ropes from palmetto leaves and from the 
hair of their horses' tails. Out of the skins of the 
legs of horses, taken off whole and tanned, they 
made bottles to carry water. At last they made three 
boats, living on horse-meat until these were ready. 
Then they set sail, were shipwrecked again and again, 
went through all sorts of sorrows, lived on half a 
handful of raw maize a day for each person, and were 
so exhausted that at one time all but Cabega de Vaca 
became unconscious, and were restored to life by 
being thrown into the water on the capsizing of the 
boat — a tale which, it is thought, may have suggested 
to Coleridge his picture of the dead sailors coming to 
life in the "Ancient Mariner." 

During this voyage of thirty days along the coast 
they passed a place where a great fresh-water river 
ran into the sea, and they dipped up fresh water to 
drink; this has been supposed to be the Mississippi, 
and this to have been its first discovery by white men. 
Cabega de Vaca must at any rate have reached the 
Lower Mississippi before De Soto, and have pene- 
trated the northern part of Mexico before Cortez, for 

70 



THE SPANISH DISCOVERERS 

he traversed the continent; and after eight years of 
wandering, during which he saw many novel won- 
ders, including the buffalo, he found himself with 
three surviving companions at the Spanish settle- 
ments on the Gulf of California, near the river Culia- 
can. The narrative of Cabega de Vaca has been 
translated in full by Buckingham Smith, and no sin- 
gle account of Spanish adventure combines so many 
amazing incidents. His pictures of the country trav- 
ersed are generally accurate and complete, and he 
had almost every conceivable experience with the 
Indians. He was a slave to tribes which kept white 
captives in the most abject bondage, and every day 
put arrows to their breasts by way of threat for the 
morrow. And he encountered other tribes which 
brought all their food to the white men to be breathed 
upon before they ate it; tribes which accompanied 
their visitors by thousands as a guard of honor in 
their march through the country; and tribes where 
the people fetched all the goods from their houses, 
and laid them before the strangers passing by, pray- 
ing them, as visitors from heaven, to accept their 
choicest possessions. Yet all these tales are com- 
bined with descriptions so minute and occurrences so 
probable that the main narrative must be accepted 
for truth, though it is impossible to tell precisely 
where belief should begin or end. 

Such were some of the early Spanish discoveries. 
I pass by the romantic adventures of Cortez and 
Pizarro; they were not discoveries, but rather con- 
quests, and their conquests la}^ almost wholly be- 
yond the borders of the region now known as the 
United States of America. There is nothing more 
picturesque in the early history of any country than 

71 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

the period of Spanish adventure; nor is there any- 
thing sadder than the reverse of the picture, when 
we consider the wrongs endured by the native popu- 
lation. Those gentle races whom Columbus found 
so hospitable and so harmless were soon crushed by 
the invaders, and the more powerful tribes of the 
main-land fared no better. Weapons, tortures, fire, 
and even blood-hounds fiercer than wild beasts were 
used against them. Spanish writers delight to de- 
scribe the scars and wounds of these powerful ani- 
mals, some of which were so highly esteemed as to 
be rated as soldiers under their own names, receiv- 
ing their full allowance of food as such, the brute 
being almost as cruel and formidable as a man. For 
the credit of civilization and Christianity it is to be 
remembered that the same nation and faith which 
furnished the persecutors supplied also the defenders 
and the narrators ; and most of what we know of the 
wrongs of the natives comes through the protests, 
not always unavailing, of the noble Las Casas. This 
good bishop unceasingly urged upon the Spanish rulers 
a policy of mercy. He secured milder laws, and, as 
bishop, even refused the sacraments at one time to 
those who reduced the Indians to slavery. But it 
was soon plain that to carry out this policy would be 
practically to abolish the sacraments, and so neither 
Church nor State sustained him. He has left us the 
imperishable record of the atrocities he could not 
repress. "With mine own eyes," he says, "I saw 
kingdoms as full of people as hives are of bees, and 
now where are they? . . . Almost all have perished. 
The innocent blood which they had shed cried out 
for vengeance; the sighs, the tears, of so many vic- 
tims went up to God." 

72 



IV 

THE OLD ENGLISH SEAMEN 

PROBABLY no single class of men ever made a 
greater change in the fortunes of mankind than 
was brought about by the great English seamen of 
the sixteenth century. Some of them were slave- 
traders, others were smugglers, almost all were law- 
less men in a lawless age ; but the result of their daring 
expeditions was to alter the destiny of the American 
continent, and therefore the career of the human race. 
In the year 1500 Spain, with Portugal, was the 
undisputed master of the New World. At the pres- 
ent time neither Spain nor Portugal owns a foot of 
land in either North or South America, The des- 
tiny of the whole western world has been changed; 
and throughout almost all the northern half of it the 
language, the institutions, the habits have been ut- 
terly transformed. At the time when Europe was 
first stirred by the gold and the glory brought from 
the newly discovered America, it was only Spain, and 
in a small degree Portugal, that reaped the harvest. 
These were then the two great maritime and coloniz- 
ing powers of Europe ; and two bulls from Pope Alex- 
ander VI., in 1493, had permitted them to divide be- 
tween them any newly discovered portions of the 
globe. Under this authority Portugal was finally 
permitted to keep Brazil — which had been first col- 

73 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

onized by Portuguese — while ,Spain claimed all the 
rest of the continent. To this day the results of 
that mutual distribution are plainly to be seen in 
South America. Brazil speaks Portuguese, while al- 
most all the rest of South America, with Mexico, 
speaks Spanish. But beyond Mexico, through all 
the vast length and breadth of North America, save 
in the Province of Quebec, English is the prevailing 
and official language. Throughout that region, in- 
stead of the Latin race the Germanic prevails; in- 
stead of the Roman Catholic faith the Protestant 
preponderates. There has not been in the history 
of the world a profounder change in the current of 
human events. The most remarkable circumstance 
of all is, that this change was substantially made in a 
single century (the sixteenth), and was made mainly 
through a single class of men — the old English sea- 
men. They it was who broke the power of Spain, 
and changed the future destinies of America. 

Other nations doubtless co-operated. Italy, es- 
pecially, contained the great intellectual and culti- 
vated race in that age, and furnished both Spain and 
Portugal again and again with ships, mathematical 
instruments, captains, crews, and even bankers' 
credits. Spain sent across the Atlantic ocean Colum- 
bus and Amerigo Vespucci, both Italians; France 
sent Verrazzano, an Italian; England sent Cabot, an 
Italian by citizenship and probably by birth and 
blood. For centuries the descendants of the North- 
men confined their voyages to the shores of western 
Europe ; they knew less even of the Mediterranean than 
their Viking ancestors ; but London had Italian mer- 
chants, and Bristol had Italian sailors, and it is to 
these that we owe the pioneer explorations of the 

74 



THE OLD ENGLISH SEAMEN 

Cabots. We must begin with these, for on these 
rested, in the first place, all the claims of England to 
the North American coast. 

There is a great contrast between the considerable 
knowledge that we have about the career of Colum- 
bus and the scanty and contradictory information left 
to us in regard to the Cabots. There is scarcely a 
fact about them or their voyages which is known 
with complete accuracy. We do not know past 
question their nationality or their birthdays, or the 
dates of their voyages; nor do we always know by 
which of the family those expeditions were made. 
John Cabot was a Genoese who came to England to 
reside. Sebastian Cabot is now pretty well known 
to have been born in Bristol. He received a patent 
from the King in 1496 — he and his father and broth- 
ers — to make discoveries ; but the only engraved map 
bearing his name claims that he had already found 
North America two years before that date. "John 
Cabot, a Venetian, and Sebastian Cabot, his son, dis- 
covered this region, formerly unknown, in the year 
1494, on the 24th day of June, at the fifth hour." 
This date appears both in the Latin and Spanish in- 
scriptions on the unique copy of this map in the 
National Library at Paris, the map itself having 
been engraved in 1544, but only having come to 
light in 1843. Its authenticity has been fully dis- 
cussed by M. D'Avezac, who believes in it, and by 
Dr. J. G. Kohl and Charles Deane, who reject it. 
R. H. Major, of the British Museum, has made the 
ingenious suggestion that the date, which is in Ro- 
man letters, was originally written by Cabot thus, 
MCCCCXCVIL, and that the V, being carelessly writ- 
ten, passed for IL, so that the transcriber wrote 

75 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

1494 instead of 1497. To add to the confusion, there 
is evidence in the Spanish State papers that would, 
if credited, carry back the first voyages of the Cabots 
to an earher date than even that of Columbus. The 
Spanish envoy in England wrote to the sovereigns 
Ferdinand and Isabella (July 25, 1498), that the 
people of Bristol had been annually sending ships 
for seven years "in search of the island Brazil and 
the seven cities, according to the fancy of that Italian 
Cabot." This would imply that his first expedition 
took place in 1491. 

But it is quite certain that this carries back the 
date too far; it is almost certain, also, that it was the 
example of Columbus which aroused Sebastian Cabot 
to action. In one of the few sentences positively 
attributed to him, though by an unknown witness, 
he says of the first voyage of Columbus: "In that 
time when news was brought that Don Christopher 
Colonus, Genoese, had discovered the coasts of In- 
dies, whereof was great talk in all the court of King 
Henry VII., who then reigned, insomuch that all 
men, with great admiration, affirmed it to be a thing 
more divine than human to sail by the West unto 
the East, where spices grow, by a way that was never 
known before ; by this fame and report there increased 
in my heart a great flame of desire to attempt some 
notable thing; and understanding by the sphere 
(globe) that if I should sail by way of the northwest 
I should by a shorter track come into India, I im- 
parted my ideas to the King." 

It is not improbable that the map of Sebastian 
Cabot gives us an authentic basis of knowledge in 
regard to the points visited by him, even if the date 
assigned is not quite trustworthy. His "Prima 

76 



THE OLD ENGLISH SEAMEN 

Vista," or point first seen — what sailors call landfall 
— was in that case Cape Breton. He sailed along 
Prince Edward Island, then known as the Isle of St. 
John, and along the Gulf of St. Lawrence, perhaps 
beyond the site where Quebec now stands. He then 
sailed eastward to Newfoundland, which he described 
as consisting of many islands; then southward per- 




" Sebastian Cabot, Captain and Pilot Major of his Sacred Im- 
perial Majesty, the Emperor Don Carlos the 5th of his name, and 
King our Lord, made this figure extended in plane in the year of 
the birth of our Saviour Jesus Christ, 1544." 



haps to the Chesapeake River, and then homeward. 
He saw first the bleakest and most rugged part of 
the North American coast. 

77 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

At any rate, it is probable that in 1497 Sebastian 
Cabot and his father sailed with five ships, furnished 
at their own cost, but upon the condition that they 
should pay the King one-fifth of all profits. They 
were authorized by the King to sail "to all parts, 
countries, and seas of the East, of the West, and of 
the North, under our banners and ensigns . . . upon 
their own proper costs and charges, to seek out, dis- 
cover, and find whatsoever Isles, Countries, Regions, 
or Provinces of the Heathen and Infidels whatsoever 
they be, and in whatsoever part of the world, which 
before this time have been unknown to Christians." 
They were also permitted, in« the royal phrase, "to 
set up our banners and ensigns in every village, town, 
castle, isle, or main-land of them newly found, and to 
subdue, occupy, and possess them." In addition to 
all other uncertainties, the authorities differ greatly 
as to whether it was John or Sebastian who should 
have the honor of the great discoveries made by this 
expedition. Hakluyt, who compiled the well-known 
collection of voyages, and who was bom a few years 
before Sebastian Cabot's death, and was the best-in- 
formed Englishman of his time as to nautical mat- 
ters, declares that * ' a great part of this continent as 
well as of the islands was first discovered for the King 
of England by Sebastian Gabote, an Englishman, 
born in Bristow, son of John Gabote, in 1496." Else- 
where he says: "Columbus first saw the firme land 
August I, 1498, but Gabote made his great discovery 
in 1496." On the other hand, there is an entry in 
the Milan archives (August, 1497): "Some months 
ago his Majesty Henry VII. sent out a Venetian, who 
is a very good mariner, has good skill in discovering 
new islands, and he has returned safe, and has found 

78 



THE OLD ENGLISH SEAMEN 

two very large and fertile new islands, having like- 
wise discovered the seven cities, 400 leagues from 
England, on the western passage." This names 
neither John nor Sebastian. But there is another 
letter in the Milan archives, from Lorenzo Pasqualigo 
to his brother (dated August 23, 1497), which might 
seem to settle the matter: 



"This Venetian of ours, who went with a ship from Bristol 
in quest of new islands, is returned, and says that seven 
hundred leagues hence he discovered ' terra, firma,' which is 
the territory of the Grand Cham. He coasted for three 
hundred leagues, and landed. He saw no human being 
whatsoever; but he has brought hither to the King certain 
snares which had been set to catch game, and a needle for 
making nets; he also found some felled trees; wherefore he 
supposed there were inhabitants, and returned to his ship in 
alarm. 

"He was three months on the voyage, it is quite certain; 
and coming back, he saw two islands to starboard, but would 
not land, time being precious, as he was short of provisions. 
The King is much pleased with this intelligence. He says 
that the tides are slack, and do not flow as they do here. 
The King has promised that in the spring he shall have ten 
ships, armed according to his own fancy; and at his request 
he has conceded to him all the prisoners, except such as are 
confined for high-treason, to man them with. He has also 
given him money wherewith to amuse himself till then; 
and he is now at Bristol with his wife, who is a Vene- 
tian woman, and with his sons. His name is Zuan Cabot, 
and they call him the great admiral. Vast honor is paid 
him, and he dresses in silk; and these English run after 
him like mad people, so that he can enlist as many of 
them as he pleases, and a number of our own rogues be- 
sides. 

"The discoverer of these places planted on his new-found 
land a large cross, with one flag of England, and another of 
St. Mark, by reason of his being a Venetian, so that our 
banner has floated very far afield." 

79 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

But the librarian of the Bristol public library, Mr. 
Nicholls, in his biography of Sebastian Cabot, points 
out that we have among the privy purse expenses 
of Henry VII. some entries that quite change this 
story. We have there recorded the very sum paid 
to John Cabot (August lo, 1497): "To him who 
found the new isle, ;^io." Fifty dollars was certainly 
a moderate price to pay for the whole continent of 
North America, and certainly not sufficient to keep 
"the great admiral" and his Venetian wife in silk 
dresses from August to the following spring. This 
evident exaggeration throws some doubt over the 
whole tone of Signor Pasqualigo's narrative; yet it 
leaves the main facts untouched. The most prob- 
able explanation of the whole contradiction is thought 
to be that John Cabot, the father, was the leader in 
the "great voyage," and won most fame at the time, 
but that his death, which happened soon after, left 
his son Sebastian in possession of the field, after which 
time Sebastian's later voyages gave most of the laurels 
to his name. At any rate, they belonged to the name 
of Cabot, and this will probably always rank next to 
that of Columbus in popular renown. 

A patent for another voyage was granted to John 
Cabot in 1498, and was used, though some doubt 
still exists about the leadership of this expedition. 
Cabot went expressly, Gomara says, "to know 
what manner of lands these Indies were to inhabit." 
The King's privy purse account shows that bounties 
were given to those who enlisted under Cabot. 
"A reward of £2 to Jas. Carter for going to the 
new Isle, also to Thos. Bradley and Launcelot Thir- 
kill, going to the new Isle £zo'' It would be curious 
to know if these sums represent the comparative 

80 



THE OLD ENGLISH SEAMEN 

value of the recruits ; at any rate, besides two pounds' 
worth of Carters and thirty pounds' worth of Brad- 
leys and Thirkills — these being respectable mer- 
chants — Cabot had a liberal supply of men upon 
whose heads no bounty was set, unless to pay him 
for removing them. Perkin Warbeck's insurrection 
had lately been suppressed, and had filled the jails; 
and the Venetian calendar tells us that "the King 
gave Cabot the sweepings of the prisons." It was 
poor material out of which to make colonists, as 
Captain John Smith discovered more than a century 
later. 

What with jail-birds and others, Cabot took with 
him in 1498 three hundred men, and sailed past Ice- 
land, or Island, as it was then called, a region well 
known to Bristol (or Bristow) men, and not likely to 
frighten his rather untrustworthy ship's company. 
Then he sailed for Labrador, which he called " La 
Tierra de los Baccalaos," or briefly, "The Baccalaos" 
— this word meaning simply cod-fish. He said that 
he found such abundance of this fish as to hinder the 
sailing of his ships ; that he found seals and salmon 
abundant in the rivers and bays, and bears which 
plunged into the water and caught these fish. He 
described herds of reindeer, arid men like Eskimo, 
but he could find no passage to India among the 
"islands." This is what they were habitually called 
in those days, though the King more guardedly de- 
scribed the new region in his patent as " the said 
Londe [land] or Isles." Cabot left some colonists on 
the bleak shores of Labrador or Newfoundland, then 
returned and took the poor fellows on board again; 
he sailed south, following the coast perhaps as far 
as Florida, but not a man would go ashore to found 

6 81 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

another colony, and he returned to England with in- 
creased fame but little profit. Later he explored 
Hudson Bay, looking vainly for a passage westward, 
while the King was still giving bounties to those who 
went to "the new island," or sometimes to "the 
Newfounded island," which shows how easily the 
name Newfoundland came to be fixed upon one part 
of the region explored. The date of the return of 
the expedition is not recorded, and it has been 
thought that John Cabot died on the voyage. 

The Cabots were certainly in one sense the dis- 
coverers of America : it was they who first made sure 
that it was a wholly new and unknown continent. 
In his early voyages John Cabot had no doubt that 
he had visited India, but after the voyage of 1498 
Sebastian Cabot expressed openly his disappoint- 
ment that a " New Found Land " of most inhospitable 
aspect lay as a barrier between Europe and the 
desired Asia. As the German writer, Dr. As her, has 
well said, " Cabot's displeasure involves the scientific 
discovery of a new world." In Sebastian's charts 
North America stands as a separate and continuous 
continent, though long after his time the separate 
islands were delineated, as of old, by others, and 
all were still supposed to be outlying parts of Asia. 
In this, as in other respects, Cabot was better ap- 
preciated fifty years later than in his own day. 
His truthful accounts for the time discouraged 
further enterprise in the same direction. "They 
that seek riches," said Peter Ma,rtyr, "must not go to 
the frozen North." And after one or two ineffectual 
undertakings he found no encouragement to repeat his 
voyages to the North American coast, but was said to 
have been sought for by both Spain and England to 

82 



THE OLD ENGLISH SEAMEN 

conduct other enterprises. He was employed in or- 
ganizing expeditions to the Brazils, or to the north 
pole by way of Russia, but the continent he had dis- 
covered was left unexplored. He was esteemed as a 
skilful mariner and one who had held high official 
station; he died dreaming of a new and infallible 
mode of discovering the longitude which he thought 
had been revealed to him from Heaven, and which 
he must not disclose. The date of his death, like that 
of his birth, is unknown, and his burial-place is for- 
gotten. But fifty years later, when Englishmen turn- 
ed again for a different object towards the American 
continent, they remembered these early achievements 
and based on them a claim of ownership by right of 
discovery. Even then they were so little appre- 
ciated that Lord Bacon, writing his Reign of Henry 
VII., gives but three or four sentences to the ex- 
plorations which perhaps exceed in real importance 
all else that happened under that reign. 

For about half a century the English seamen hard- 
ly crossed the Atlantic. When they began again it 
was because they had learned from Spain to engage 
in the slave-trade. In that base path the maritim.e 
glory of England found its revival. For fifty years 
Englishmen thought of the New World only as a 
possession of Spain, with which England was in more 
or less friendly alliance. It was France, not Eng- 
land, which showed at that time some symptoms of 
a wish to dispute the rich possession with Spain ; and 
after the voyage of Verrazzano, in 1521, the name 
New France covered much of North America on cer- 
tain maps and globes. It was little more than a 
name; but tlie Breton and Gascon fishemien began 
to make trips to the West Indies, mingling more or 



HISTORY OF THE, UNITED STATES 

less of smuggling and piracy with their avowed pur- 
suit, and the English followed them — learned the way 
of them, in fact. Under the sway of Queen Eliza- 
beth, England was again Protestant, not Catholic; 
the bigotry of Philip II. had aroused all the Protes- 
tant nations against him, and the hereditary hostil- 
ity of France made the French sailors only too ready 
to act as pilots and seamen for the English. Between 
the two the most powerful band of buccaneers and 
adventurers in the world was soon let loose upon the 
Spanish settlements. 

It is a melancholy fact that the voyage which first 
opened the West Indian seas to the English ships was 
a slave-trading voyage. The discreditable promise 
made by Columbus that America should supply 
Europe w4th slaves had not been fulfilled; on the 
contrary, the demand for slaves in the Spanish mines 
and the Portuguese plantations was greater than 
America could supply, and it was necessary to look 
across the Atlantic for it. John Hawkins, an ex- 
perienced seaman, whose father had been a Guinea 
trader before him, took a cargo of slaves from Guinea 
in 1562, and sold them in the ports of Hispaniola. 
"Worshipful friends in London," it appears, shared 
his venture — Sir Lionel Ducket, Sir Thomas Lodge, 
and the like. He took three ships, the largest only one 
hundred and twenty tons ; he had but a hundred men 
in all. In Guinea, Hakluyt frankly tells us in the brief 
note which gives all that is known of this expedition, 
" he got into his possession, partly by the sword and 
partly by other meanes, to the number of three hun- 
dred negroes at the least, besides other merchandises 
which that country yeeldeth." With this miserable 
cargo he sailed for Hispaniola, and in three ports left 

84 



THE OLD ENGLISH SEAMEN 

all his goods behind him, loaded his own ship with 
hides, ginger, sugar, and pearls, and had enough to 
freight two other ships besides. This is almost all 
we know of the first voyage; but the second, in 1564, 
was fully described by John Sparke, one of his com- 
panions—and a very racy record it is. This was the 
first English narrative of American adventure; for 
though Cabot left manuscripts behind him, they were 
not printed. 

When we consider that the slave-trade is now 
treated as piracy throughout the civilized world, it 
is curious to find that these courageous early naviga- 
tors were not only slave-traders, but of a most pious 
description. When Hawkins tried to capture and 
enslave a whole town near Sierra Leone, and when 
he narrowly escaped being captured himself and meet- 
ing the fate he richly deserved, his historian says, 
" God, who worketh all things for the best, would not 
have it so, and by Him wee escaped without danger; 
His name be praysed for it." When the little fleet 
is becalmed, and suffers for want of water, the author 
says, " But Almightie God, who never suffereth His 
elect to perish, sent vs the sixteene of Februarie 
the ordinarie Brieze, which is the northwest winde." 
With these religious sentiments Hawkins carried his 
negroes to the Spanish settlements in Venezuela and 
elsewhere. The news of his former voyage had 
reached Philip of Spain, who had expressly prohibited 
the colonists from trading with Lla^^kins. But they 
wished for his slaves, and he had the skill to begin 
his traffic by explaining that he only wished to sell 
" certaine lean and sicke negroes, which he had in his 
shippe, like to die upon his hands," but v/hich, if 
taken on shore, might yet recover. It was thought 

85 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

that it might be a kindness to the poor to let them 
buy lean negroes at a low price, and so the bargain 
was permitted. If a town gave him a license to 
trade in slaves, and charged money for it, he put the 
prices high enough to cover the charges. If the 
prices were thought too high, and the town authorities 
objected, he would go on shore with a hundred men 
in armor, and " hauing in his great boate two falcons 
of brasse, and in the other boates double bases in 
their noses ' ' ; and with these cannon would so frighten 
the people that they would send the town treasurer 
to negotiate. The treasurer would perhaps come on 
horseback, with a javelin, but would be so afraid of 
the captain on foot with his armor that he would keep 
at a safe distance, and do the bargaining at the top 
of his voice. 

Hawkins and his men seem to have feared nothing 
seriously except the alligators, which they called croc- 
odiles, and of which they asserted that they drew 
people to them by their lamentations. "His nature 
is euer, when he would haue his praie, to crie and 
sobbe like a Christian bodie to prouoke them to come 
to him, and then he snatcheth at them ; and thereupon * 
came this prouerbe that is applied vnto women when 
they weepe, Lachrymce Crocodili, the meaning where- 
of is that as the crocodile when he crieth goeth then 
about most to deceive, so doth a woman most com- 
monly when she weepeth." Shakespeare, who was 
about this time writing his play of " King Henry VI.," 
apparently borrowed from Sir John Hawkins this 

story, and introduced it in his lines: 

• 

"As the mournful crocodile 
With sorrow snares relenting passengers." 

— 2 Henry VI., iii. i. 
86 



THE OLD ENGLISH SEAMEN ' 

Hawkins and his men visited Cuba, Hispaniola, 
the Tortugas, and other places; supplied food to 
Laudonniere's French settlements in what was then 
called Florida, and ultimately sailed along the coast 
of North America to Newfoundland, and thence to 
Europe. By this voyage Hawkins obtained fame and 
honor; he became Sir John Hawkins, and was author- 
ized to have on his crest the half-length figure of a 
negro prisoner, called technically "a demie-Moor 
bound and captive." Later, when Queen Elizabeth 
had definitely taken sides against Spain, and with- 
drawn all obstacles to Hawkins's plans, he estab- 
lished a regular settlement, or "factory," in Guinea 
as the headquarters for his slave-trade; sailed with 
slaves once more for a third voyage across the At- 
lantic (1567) ; traded in some places openly, in others 
secretly and by night, in spite of King Philip's pro- 
hibition, and prospered well until he met in the port 
of San Juan de Ulloa a Spanish fleet stronger than 
his own. Hawkins had already put into the port 
with disabled ships, when he saw a fleet of thirteen 
Spanish treasure-ships outside. He might, perhaps, 
have kept them from entering, or have captured or 
sunk them, had he dared ; but he let them in with a 
solemn compact of mutual forbearance, was then 
treacherously attacked by the Spaniards, and an en- 
gagement was brought on. The English were at first 
successful, but the Spaniards used fire-ships against 
them, and Hawkins was utterly defeated. Some of 
his vessels were sunk ; others were driven to sea with- 
out provisions. 

Hawkins himself thus plaintively describes their 
sorrows : ' ' With manie sorrowf ull hearts wee wan- 
dred in an unknowen Sea by the space of fourteene 

87 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

dayes, tyll hunger enforced vs to seeke the lande, for 
birdes were thought very good meate, rattes, cattes, 
mise, and dogges, none escaped that might be gotten, 
parrotes and monkayes that were had in great prize 
were thought then very profitable if they served the 
tourne [turn] one dinner." A poor remnant of the 
crews reached England at last in a condition as wretch- 
ed as that of the negroes they had kidnapped; and 
Hawkins thus sums up their adventures: "If all the 
miseries and troublesome affaires of this sorrowfull 
voyage should be perfectly and thoroughly written, 
there should need a paynfull [painstaking] man with 
his penne, and as great a time as hee had that wrote 
the lives and deathes of the martirs." Nothing is 
more probable than that Hawkins regarded himself 
as entitled to a place upon the catalogue of saints. 
But darkened as were these voyages by wrong and 
by disaster, they nevertheless were the beginning of 
the long sea-fight between Spain and England for 
the possession of the New World. 

The contest was followed up by the greatest of the 
English sailors, Francis Drake, first known as com- 
manding a vessel under Hawkins in the ill-fated ex- 
pedition just described. From the time of that dis- 
aster Drake took up almost as a profession the work 
of plundering the Spaniards; and he might well be 
called a buccaneer had he not concentrated his pi- 
racy on one particular nation. He was the son of a 
Protestant chaplain who had suffered for his opin- 
ions; and though the policy of Elizabeth was long 
imcertain, the public sentiment of England was with 
the United Netherlands in their desperate war against 
Philip II. The English seamen had found out that 
the way to reach Spain was through her rich pos- 



THE OLD ENGLISH SEAMEN 

sessions in the West Indies and South America, or by- 
plundering the treasure-ships to which she could af- 
ford but meagre escort. Drake made one trip after 
another to the American coast, and on February 1 1 , 
1573, he looked for the first time on the Pacific from 
the top of a tree in Panama. He resolved to become 
the pioneer of England on that ocean, where the 
English flag had never yet floated, and he asked the 
blessing of God on this enterprise. In November, 
1577, he embarked for the fulfilftient of this purpose, 
being resolved to take Peru itself from the Spaniards. 
His enterprise was known at the time as "the fa- 
mous voyage," and ended in the first English cir- 
cumnavigation of the globe. 

Such novels as Kingsley's Westivard Ho! or, Sir 
Amyas Leigh give a picture, hardly exaggerated, of 
the exciting achievements of these early seamen. 
Drake sailed from Plymouth, November 15, 1577, 
with one hundred and sixty-four sailors and advent- 
urers in a fleet of five ships and barks, and after 
making some captures of Spanish vessels about the 
Cape de Verde Islands, he steered for the open sea. 
He was fifty-four days out of sight of land — time 
enough to have made eight ocean voyages in a Liver- 
pool steamer — before he came in sight of the Brazils. 
There he cruised awhile and victualled his ships with 
seals, which are not now considered good eating. Fol- 
lowing down the coast in the track of Magellan, he 
reached at last the strait which bears the name of 
this Portuguese explorer, but which no Englishman 
had yet traversed. Drake's object was to come by 
this unexpected ocean route to Peru, and there 
ravage the Spanish settlements. 

Reaching the coast of Chili, he heard from an Ind- 

89 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED vS T A T E S 

ian in a canoe that there was a great Spanish ship 
at Santiago laden with treasure from Peru. Ap- 
proaching the port, the EngHshman found the ship 
riding at anchor, having on board but six Spaniards 
and three negroes. These poor fellows, never dream- 
ing that any but their own countrymen could have 
found their way there, welcomed the visitors, beating 
a drum in their honor, and setting forth a jar of 
Chilian wine for their entertainment. But as soon 
as the strangers entered, one of them, named Thomas 
Moon, began to lay about him with his sword in a 
most uncivil manner, striking one Spaniard, and 
shouting, "Go down, dog!" {Abaxo, perro!) All the 
Spaniards and negroes were at once driven below, 
except one, who jumped overboard and alarmed the 
town. The people of Santiago fled to the woods, 
and the Englishmen landed and robbed the town, in- 
cluding a little chapel, from which they took "a sil- 
ver chalice, two cruets, and one altar-cloth, the spoyle 
whereof our Generall gave to M. Fletcher, his min- 
ister." On board the captured ship they found 
abundance of wine and treasure, amounting to thirty- 
seven thousand ducats of Spanish money — a ducat 
being worth five and a half shillings English. 

They sailed away, leaving their prisoners on shore. 
Landing at Tarapaca, they found a Spaniard lying 
asleep, with thirteen bars of silver beside him, these 
being worth four thousand ducats. "We tooke the 
siluer," says the narrator, briefly, "and left the man." 
Landing for water at another place, they met a Span- 
iard and an Indian boy driving eight " Llamas or 
sheepe of Peru, which are as bigge as asses" ; each of 
these having two bags of leather on his back, each bag 
holding fifty pounds of fine silver-eight hundred 

90 



THE OLD ENGLISH SEAMEN 

pounds weight in all. Soon after they captured three 
small barks, one of them laden with silver and another 
with a quantity of linen cloth. At Lima they found 
twelve ships at anchor, robbed them, and cut their 
cables ; and afterguards they came up with a bark yield- 
ing eighty pounds of gold and a crucifix of gold and 
emeralds. Everywhere they took people wholly by 
surprise, such a thing as an English ship being a 
sight wholly new on the Pacific Ocean, altogether 
unexpected, and particularly unwelcome. 

Everywhere they heard of a great Spanish treas- 
ure-ship, the Cacafitego, which had sailed before their 
arrival; they followed her to Payta and to Panama, 
and the "General" promised his chain of gold to 
any lookout who should spy her. Coming up with her 
at last, they fired three shots, striking down her miz- 
zen-mast, and then captured her without resistance. 
They found in her "great riches, as iewels, and pre- 
cious stones, thirteene chests full of royals [reals] of 
plate, fourscore pounds weight of golde, and sixe and 
twentie tunne of siluer." To show how thoroughly 
Drake did his work, piratical as it was, the narrator 
of the voyage says that there were found on board 
two silver cups, which were the pilot's, to whom the 
General said, "Senior [Senor] Pilot, you haue here 
two siluer cups ; but I must needes haue one of them " ; 
and the pilot gave him one "because hee could not 
otherwise chuse," and gave the other to the ship's 
steward, perhaps for as good a reason. Thus went 
the voyage; now rifling a town, now plundering a 
captive, now capturing a vessel and taking "a f awl- 
con [breastplate] of golde with a great emeraud in the 
breast thereof," from the owner in person. Never 
once did thev encounter an armed opponent, or en- 

91 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

gage in a fair fight; on the other hand, they were 
never guilty, as the Spaniards often were, of wanton 
cruelty, judging both sides by the testimony of their 
own witnesses. It was an ignoble warfare in one 
sense; but when we consider that these Englishmen 
were in an unknown sea, with none but unwilling 
pilots, and that there was not a man along the shore 
who was not their enemy, there was surely an ele- 
ment of daring in the whole affair. 

They repaired their ships at the island of Sanno; 
and there the attacks upon the Spaniards ended. 
The narrator thus sums up the situation: "Our Gen- 
eral at this place and time, thinking himselfe both in 
respect of his priuate iniuries received from the Span- 
iards, as also of their contempts and indignities of- 
fered to our countrey and Prince in generall, suffi- 
ciently satisfied and reuenged, and supposing that 
her Maiestie at his returne would rest contented with 
this seruice, purposed to continue no longer upon the 
Spanish coastes, but began to consider and to con- 
sult of the best way for his countrey." 

He resolved at last to avoid the Strait of Magellan, 
which he had found dangerous, and the Atlantic 
Ocean, where he was too well known, and to go north- 
ward along the coast, and sail across the Pacific as 
he had already crossed the Atlantic. He sailed as 
far north as California, which he called New Albion ; 
he entered "a faire and good bay," which may have 
been that of San Francisco; he took possession of 
the country in the name of Queen Elizabeth, setting 
up a post with that announcement. Pie then sup- 
posed, but erroneously, that the Spaniards had never 
visited that region, and his recorder says of it : " There 
is no part of earth here to bee taken up wherein there 

92 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED S T A 1^ E S 

is not some speciall likelihood of gold and silver." 
Then he sailed across the l^acific, this passage lasting 
from midsummer until October i8 (1579), when he 
and his men came among the islands off the coast of 
Africa, and so rounded the Cape of Good Hope and 
reached England at last, after three years' absence. 
They were the first Englishmen to sail round the 
world, and the first of their countrymen to visit those 
islands of "the gorgeous East" which Portugal had 
first reached, and Spain had now wrested from Port- 
ugal. 

The feats of Hawkins and Drake, clouded as they 
were by the slave-trade in one case, and by what 
seemed much like piracy in the other, produced a 
great stir in England, "The nakednesse of the Span- 
iards and their long-hidden secrets are now at length 
espied." Thus wrote Hakluyt three years after 
Drake's return, and urged "the deducting of some 
colonies of our superfluous people into those temper- 
ate and fertile partes of America which, being within 
six weekes sailing of England, are yet unpossessed 
by any Christians, and seeme to offer themselves unto 
us, and stretching nearer unto her Majesty's domin- 
ions than to any other part of Europe." The for- 
gotten explorations of Cabot were now remembered. 
Here was a vast country to which Spain and France 
had laid claim, but which neither had colonized. The 
fishermen of four or five nations were constantly re- 
sorting thither, but it belonged, by right of prior 
discovery, to England alone. Why should not Eng- 
land occupy it? " It seems probable," wrote the his- 
torian of Sir Humphrey Gilbert in 1583, "by event 
of precedent attempts made by the Spanyards and 
French sundry times" {i. e., by their uniform failure) 

94 



THE OLD ENGLISH SEAMEN 

" that the countries lying north of Florida God hath 
reserued the same to be reduced unto Christian civil- 
ity by the English nation. For not long after that 
Christopher Columbus had discouered the islands and 
continents of the West Indies for Spayne, John and 
Sebastian Cabot made discovery also of the West 
from Florida northwards to the behoof e of England." 
Frobisher had already attempted the Northwest pas- 
sage ; Sir Humphrey Gilbert, the first English colonizer, 
took possession of Newfoundland in the name of the 
Queen, and tried in vain to settle a colony there ; and 
he died at sea at last, as described in Longfellow's 
ballad : 

"He sat upon the deck, 

The Book was in his hand, 
'Do not fear; Heaven is as near,' 
He said, 'by water as by land.'" 

He had obtained a commission from the Queen " to 
inhabit and possess at his choice all remote and heath- 
en lands not in the actual possession of any Christian 
prince." He himself obtained for his body but the 
unquiet possession of a grave in the deep sea; but 
his attempt was one event more in the great series 
of English enterprises. After him his half-brother 
Ralegh sent Amidas and Barlow (1584) to explore 
what was then first called Virginia in honor of the 
Queen ; and the year after Ralegh sent an ineffectual 
colony to establish itself within what is now North 
Carolina. Then the tumults of war arose again; and 
Sir Francis Drake was summoned to lead a great 
naval expedition, a real "armada," to the attack on 
Spanish America. 

He sailed from Plymouth, England, September 17, 

95 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

1585, with about twenty-five vessels carrying 2300 
men, and he had under him, as vice-admiral, Captain 
Martin Frobisher, famous by his endeavor after the 
Northwest passage. I must pass lightly over the de- 
tails of Drake's enterprise. It was full of daring, 
though it must be remembered that the Spanish forts 
in the West Indies were weak, their ordnance poor, 
and their garrisons small. At the city of San Do- 
mingo, which is described as "the antientest and 
chief inhabited place in all the tract of country here- 
about," Drake landed a thousand or twelve hundred 
men. A hundred cavalrymen hovered near them, 
but quicky retreated ; the thousand Englishmen, di- 
vided in two portions, assaulted the two city gates, 
carried them easily, and then reunited in the market- 
place. Towards midnight they tried the gates of 
the castle; it was at once abandoned, and by degrees, 
street by street, the invaders got possession of half 
the town. The Spanish commissioners held the other 
half, and there were constant negotiations for ran- 
som; "but upon disagreement," says the English nar- 
rator, "we still spent the early mornings in firing the 
outmost houses; but they being built very magnifi- 
cently of stone, with high lofts, gave us no small tra- 
vail to ruin them." They kept two hundred sailors 
busy at this work of firing houses, while as many 
soldiers stood guard over them, and yet had not de- 
stroyed more than a third part of the town when 
they consented to accept twenty-five thousand ducats 
for the ransom of the rest. 

It is hard to distinguish this from the career of a 
buccaneer ; but, after all, Drake was a mild-mannered 
gentleman, and kept a chaplain. There are, to be 
sure, in the anonymous "short abstract" of this 

96 



THE OLD ENGLISH SEAMEN 

voyage "in the handwriting of the time," published 
by the Hakluyt Society, some ugly hints as to the 
private morals of the officers of Drake's ship, in- 
cluding the captain himself. And there is something 
very grotesque in the final fall from grace of the chap- 
lain, Francis Fletcher, himself, as described in a 
memorandum among the Harleian MSS. This is the 
same chaplain who had the chalice and the altar- 
cloth as his share of the plunder of a church at San- 
tiago. Drake aftenvards found him guilty of mutiny, 
and apparently felt himself free to pronounce both 
temporal and spiritual penalties, as given in the fol- 
lowing narrative by an eye-witness: 

" Drake excommvmicated Fletcher shortly after. . . . He 
called all the company together, and then put a lock about 
one of his legs, and Drake sytting cros legged on a chest, and 
a paire of pantoffles [slippers] in his hand, he said, Francis 
Fletcher, I doo heere excomunicate the out of y^ Church of 
God, and from all benefites and graces thereof, and I de- 
nounce the to the divell and all his angells; and then he 
charged him vppon payne of death not once to come before 
the mast, for if hee did, he swore he should be hanged; and 
Drake cawsed a posy [inscription] to be written and bond 
about Fletcher's arme, with chardge that if hee took it of 
liee should then be hanged. The poes [posy or inscription] 
was, Francis fletcher, y' falsest knave that liveth." 

Carthagena was next attacked by Drake, and far 
more stoutly defended, the inhabitants having had 
twenty days' notice because of the attack on San 
Domingo. Carthagena was smaller, but for various 
reasons more important ; there had been preparations 
for attack, the women and children had been sent 
away, with much valuable property; a few old-fash- 
ioned cannon had been brought together; there were 

7 (J 7 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

barricades made of earth and water-pipes across the 
principal streets; there were pointed sticks tipped 
with Indian poisons, and stuck in the ground, points 
upward. There were also Indian allies armed with 
bows and poisoned arrows. Against all these ob- 
stacles the Englishmen charged pell-mell with pikes 
and swords, relying little upon fire-arms. They had 
longer pikes than the Spaniards, and more of the 
Englishmen were armed. " Every man came so will- 
ingly on to the service, as the enemy was not able to 
endure the fury of such hot assault." It ended in 
the ransoming of the town for 110,000 ducats, or 
about ,-^30,000. It seems, by the report of the coun- 
cil of captains, that £100,000 had been the original 
demand, but these officers say that they can "with 
much honor and reputation," accept the smaller sum- 
after all, "inasmuch," they add, "as we have taken 
our full pleasure, both in the uttermost sacking and 
spoiling of all their household goods and merchan- 
dise, as also in that we have consumed and ruined a 
great part of the town by fire." After all, the Eng- 
lishmen insisted that this ransom did not include the 
abbey and the block-house or castle, and they forced 
the Spaniards to give "a thousand crowns" more for 
the abbey, and because there was no money left with 
which to redeem the castle, it was blown up by the 
English. Drake afterwards took St. Augustine, al- 
ready settled by the Spaniards, and after sailing 
northward, and taking on board the survivors of 
Ralegh's unsuccessful colony in what is now North 
Carolina, he sailed for England. 

What a lawless and even barbarous life was this 
which Drake led upon the American coast and among 
the Spanish settlements! Yet he was not held to 

98 



THE OLD ENGLISH SEAMEN 

have dishonored his nation, but the contrary. His 
Queen rewarded him, poets sang of him, and Sir 
Philip Sidney, the mirror of all chivalry at that day, 
would have joined one of his expeditions had not his 
royal mistress kept him at home. The Spaniards 
would have done no better, to be sure, and would 
have brought to bear all the horrors of the Inquisi- 
tion besides. Yet the English were apt pupils in all 
the atrocities of personal torture. Cavendish, who 
afterwards sailed in the track of Drake, circumnavi- 
gating the globe like him, took a small bark on the 
coast of Chili, which vessel had on board three Span- 
iards and a Fleming. These men were bound to 
Lima with letters warning the inhabitants of the ap- 
proach of the English, and they had sworn before 
their priests that in case of danger the letters should 
be thrown overboard. "Yet our General," says the 
narrator, "wrought so with them that they did con- 
fess it ; but he was fain to cause them to be tormented 
with their thumbs in a wrench, and to continue three 
several times with extreme pain. Also he made the 
old Fleming believe that he would hang him, and the 
rope being about his neck, he was pulled up a little 
from the hatches, and yet he would not confess, 
choosing rather to die than to be perjured. In the 
end it was confessed by one of the Spaniards." Who 
can help feeling more respect for the fidelity of this 
old man, who would die but not break his oath, than 
for the men who tortured him ? 

Yet it is just to say that the expeditions of Caven- 
dish, like the later enterprises of Drake, were a school 
for personal courage, and were not aimed merely 
against the defenceless. Cavendish gave battle off 
California to the great Spanish flag-ship of the Paci- 

99 



~. Ui J. 



HISTORY OF THE U N' I T E D STATES 

fie, the SaJita Anna, of 700 l(^iis burden, bound home 
from the Philippine Islands. They fought for five or 
six hours with heavy ordnance and with small arms, 
and the Spaniards at last surrendered. There were 
on board 122,000 pesos of gold, besides silks and 
satins and other merchandise, with provisions and 
wines. These Cavendish seized, put the crew and 
passengers — nearly 200 in all — on shore, with tents, 
provisions, and planks, and burned the Santa Anna 
to the water's edge. Then he sailed for England 
with his treasures, across the Pacific Ocean, and thus 
became the second English circumnavigator of the 
globe. This sort of privateering was an advance on 
the slave-trading of Hawkins and on Drake's early 
assaults upon almost defenceless towns; but it was 
often very remote from all honorable warfare. Yet 
it was by such means that the power of Spain was 
broken, and that the name of England and England's 
queen became mighty upon the seas. 

As the sixteenth century began with the fame of 
the Cabots, so it ended with the dreams of Ralegh. 
It is to be observed that none of these great bucca- 
neers had done anything with a view to colonizing, 
nor would it have been possible, by armed force, to 
have held the conquered Spanish towns. Had Eng- 
land only been strong enough for this, South Ameri- 
ca as well as North America might have spoken the 
English tongue to-day. But it was the British naval 
strength only that was established, and after the dis- 
persal of the great Spanish Armada sent by Philip II. 
against England in 1588, the power of Spain upon the 
water was forever broken. This opened the way for 
England to colonize unmolested the northern half of 
the New World ; and the great promoter of this work, 



THE OLD ENGLISH SEAMEN 

Sir Walter Ralegh, was the connecting link between 
two generations of Englishmen. He was at once the 
last of the buccaneers and the first of the colonizers. 

He himself had made a voyage, led by as wild a 
dream as any which, in that age of dreams, bewil- 
dered an explorer. We must remember that, though 
the terrors of the ocean were partly dispelled, their 
mysteries still held their sway over men. Job Har- 
top, in the region of the Bermudas, describes a mer- 
man: "We discovered a monster in the sea, who 
showed himself three times unto us from the middle 
upward, in which part he was proportioned like a 
man, of the complexion of a mulatto or tawny Ind- 
ian." But especially the accounts were multiplied 
of cities or islands which now appeared, now disap- 
peared, and must be patiently sought out. Sir John 
Hawkins reported " certain flitting islands" about the 
Canaries "which have been oftentimes scene, and 
when men approached them neere, they vanished . . . 
and therefore it should seeme he is not yet bom to 
whom God hath appointed the finding of them." 
Henry Hawkes, speaking of that standing mystery, 
the Seven Cities of Cibola, says that the Spaniards 
believed the Indians to cast a mist over these cities, 
through witchcraft, so that none could find them. 
Is it strange that under these influences Sir Walter 
Ralegh went in search of the fabled empire of 
Guiana ? 

Guiana was supposed in those days to be a third 
great American treasure-house, surpassing those of 
Peru and IMexico. Its capital was named El Dorado 
— "the gilded." Spanish adventurers claimed to 
have seen it from afar, and described its houses as 
n^ofed with gold and silver, and its temples as filled 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

with statues of pure gold. Milton links it with Peru 
and Mexico: 

"Rich Mexico, the seat of Montezuma, 
And Cuzco, in Peru, the richer seat 
Of Atabahpa, and yet unspoiled 
Guiana, whose great city Geryon's sons 
Call El Dorado." 

Ralegh himself went in search of this El Dorado, 
sailing up the Orinoco to find the kingdom, which 
was said to lie upon an island in a salt-water lake, 
like the Caspian Sea. He brought home report of 
many wonders, including a race called Ewaiponima, 
of whom he says that they have eyes in their shoul- 
ders and mouths in the middle of their breasts, with 
a long train of hair growing backward between their 
shoulders. He admits that he never saw them, but 
says that every child in the provinces he visited af- 
firmed of their existence. It was of these imaginary 
beings that Shakespeare describes Othello as dis- 
coursing : 

"The cannibals that each other eat, 
The Anthropophagi and men whose heads 
Do grow beneath their shoulders." 

Ralegh also reports a description he had heard of the 
inhabitants o£ this wondrous empire, sitting with the 
emperor at their carousals, their bodies stripped 
naked and covered with a white balsam, on which 
powdered gold was blown by servants through hol- 
low canes " until they be all shining from the foot to 
the head, and in this sort they sit drinking by twenties 
and hundreds, and continue in drunkenness some- 
times six or seven days together." 

102 



THE OLD ENGLISH SEAMEN 

Ralegh brought home few trophies ; but his descrip- 
tions of nature were so beautiful and his treatment 
of the natives so generous that, in spite of his having 
a touch of the buccaneer quality about him, we can 
well accept the phrase that in him "chivalry left the 
land and launched upon the deep." But that which 
makes his memory dear to later generations is that 
he, beyond any man of his time, saw the vast field 
open for American colonization, and persistently urg- 
ed upon Queen Elizabeth to enter it. "Whatso- 
ever prince shall possesse it," he wrote of his fabled 
Guiana, " shall be greatest; and if the King of Spayne 
enjoy it, he will become unresistable." Then he 
closes with this high strain of appeal, which might 
well come with irresistible force from the courtier- 
warrior who had taught the American Indians to call 
his queen "Ezrabeta Cassipuna Aquerewana," which 
means, he says, "Elizabeth, the great princess, or 
greatest commander": 

"To speake more at this time I feare would be but trouble- 
some. I trust in God, this being true, will suffice, and that 
He which is King of al Kings and Lorde of Lords will put it 
into thy heart which is Lady of Ladies to possesse it. If 
not, I will judge those men worthy to be kings thereof, that 
by her grace and leaue will undertake it of themselues." 



THE FRENCH VOYAGEURS 

WHEN Spain and Portugal undertook, in 1494, to 
divide the unexplored portions of the globe be- 
tween them, under the Pope's two edicts of the pre- 
vious year, that impertinent proposal was received 
by England and France in very characteristic wa3^s. 
England met it with blunt contempt, and France 
with an epigram. "The King of France sent word 
to our great Emperor," says Bernal Diaz, describing 
the capture of some Spanish treasure - ships by a 
French pirate, "that as he and the King of Portugal 
had divided the earth between themselves, without 
giving him a share of it, he should like them to show 
him our father Adam's will, in order to know if he 
had made them his sole heirs." {Que nwstrassen el 
testamento de niiestro padre Adan, si les dexo a ellos 
solamente por herederos.) In the meanwhile he warn- 
ed them that he should feel quite free to take all he 
could, upon the ocean. 

France was not long content with laying claim to the 
sea, but wished to have the land also. The name of 
" New France" may still be seen on early maps and 
globes, sometimes covering all that part of the Atlan- 
tic coast north of Florida, and sometimes — as in the 
map of Ortelius, made in 1572 — the whole of North 
and South America. All this claim was based upon the 

104 



THE FRENCH VOVAGEURS 

explorations, first of Verrazzano (1524), and then of 
Cartier (i 534-1 540). The first of these two voyagers 
sailed along the coast ; the second penetrated into the 
interior, and the great river St. Lawrence was earliest 
known to Europeans through the graphic narrative 
of its original French explorer. Perhaps no two ex- 
peditions since Columbus and Cabot have added more 
to the geographical knowledge of the world — or would 
have added to it but for the doubt that still rests in 
some minds over the authenticity of Verrazzano's 
narrative. To such extremes has this doubt been 
carried that Bancroft, in the revised edition of his 
history, did not so much as mention the name of Ver- 
razzano, though the general opinon of authorities 
now accepts his narrative as genuine. 

Like many Italian navigators of that age, he served 
other nations than his own, and sailed by order of 
Francis L, whose attention had just been called from 
royal festivals and combats of lions to take part in 
the exploration of the world. For this purpose he 
sent out Verrazzano with four ships " to discover new 
lands" (a discoprir niwve terre), and it was to de- 
scribe these same regions that a letter was written 
by the explorer from Dieppe to the King, July 8, 
1524. This letter was published by Ramusio about 
forty years later, and an English translation of it 
appeared in Hakluyt's famous collection. A manu- 
script copy of the letter was discovered by Professor 
George W. Greene, at Florence, about 1840, and the 
letter itself was reprinted from this copy by the New 
York Historical Society. If authentic, it is the ear- 
liest original account of the Atlantic coast of the 
United States. Verrazzano saw land first at what 
is now North Carolina — "a newe land never before 

105 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

seen by any man, either auncient or moderne" — and 
afterwards sailed northward, putting in at many 
harbors. The natives everywhere received him kind- 
ly at first, and saved the life of a young sailor who 
was sent ashore with presents for them, and became 
exhausted with swimming. In return, the French- 
men carried off a child, and attempted to carry off a 
young girl, tall and very beautiful {di molta hellezza 
e d' alta statura), whom they found hidden with an old- 
er woman near the shore, and whom they vainly tried 
to tempt by presents. Everything which they of- 
fered was thrown down by the Indian girl in great 
anger {e con ira a terra gittava), and when they at- 
tempted to seize her, she shrieked so loudly that they 
let her alone. After such a transaction, we can un- 
derstand why Verrazzano, in the latter part of his 
voyage, found it impossible to command the con- 
fidence of the natives, so that on the northern coast 
of New England the Indians would not suffer him to 
land, but would only let down their furs and provi- 
sions into the boats from the rocks, insisting on in- 
stant payment, and making signs of disdain and con- 
tempt {dispregio e verecondia). In accordance with 
the usual logic of adventurers at that day, Verraz- 
zano made up his mind that these poor creatures had 
no sense of religion. 

This early explorer's observations on the natives 
have little value; but his descriptions of the coast, 
especially of the harbors of New York and Newport, 
have peculiar interest, and his charts, although not 
now preserved, had much influence upon contem- 
porary geography. He sailed northward as far as 
Newfoundland, having explored the coast from 34° 
to 50° of north latitude, and left on record the earliest 

106 



THE FRENCH VOYAGEURS 

description of the whole region. As to the ultimate 
fate of Verrazzano reports differ, some asserting that 
he was killed and eaten by savages, and others that he 
was hanged by the Spaniards as a pirate. Some- 
thing of the same shadowy uncertainty still attaches 
to his reputation. 

A greater than Verrazzano followed him, aroused 
and stimulated by what he had done. The first ex- 
plorer of the St. Lawrence was Jacques Cartier, who 
had sailed for years on fishing voyages from St. Malo, 
which was and is the nursery of the hardiest sailors 
of France. Having visited Labrador, he longed to 
penetrate farther; and sailing in April, 1534, he visited 
Newfoundland and the Bay of Chaleur, and set up a 
cross at Gaspe, telling the natives with pious fraud 
that it was only intended for a beacon. He then 
sailed up the St. Lawrence nearly to Anticosti, sup- 
posing that this great stream was the long-sought 
passage to Cathay and the Indies. The next year he 
sailed again, with three vessels, and for the first time 
described to the world what he calls "the river of 
Hochelaga." He applied the name of Canada to a 
certain part of the banks of the St. Lawrence, call- 
ing all below Saguenay, and all above Hochelaga, 
these being Indian names. There has been, how- 
ever, much discussion about the word "Canada," 
which means "a village" in certain Indian dialects, 
and also signifies, curiously enough, "a ravine" in 
Spanish, and "a lane" in Portuguese. 

In the greatest delight over the beauty of the river, 
the Frenchmen sailed onward. They visited Stada- 
cone, the site of Quebec, and Hochelaga, the site of 
Montreal, Cartier being the first to give the name of 
Mont Royal or Real to the neighboring mountain. 

107 



H I vS T R Y OF THE UNITED vS T A T E S 

At Hochelaga they found the carefully built forts of 
the Indians which Cartier minutely describes, and 
the large communal houses already mentioned. They 
met everywhere with a cordial reception, except that 
the Indians brought to bear strange pretences to keep 
them from ascending the river too far. The chief 
device was the following: 

While the Frenchmen lay at Stadacone they saw 
one morning a boat come forth from the woods bear- 
ing three men "dressed like devils, wrapped in dog's 
skins, white and black, their faces besmeared as black 
as any coals, with horns on their heads more than a 
yard long," and as this passed the ships, one of the 
men made a long oration, neither of them looking 
towards the ships ; then they all three fell flat in the 
boat, when the Indians came out to meet them, and 
guided them to the shore. It was afterwards ex- 
plained that these were messengers from the god 
Cudraigny, to tell the Frenchmen to go no farther 
lest they should perish with cold. The Frenchmen 
answered that the alleged god was but a fool — that 
Jesus Christ would protect his followers from cold. 
Then the Indians, dancing and shouting, accepted 
this interpretation, and made no further objection. 
But when at a later period Cartier and his compan- 
ions passed the dreary winter, first of all Europeans, 
in what he called the Harbor of the Holy Cross — 
somewhere on the banks of the St. Charles River — 
he learned by suffering that the threats of the god 
Cudraigny had some terror in them, after all. He 
returned to France the following summer, leaving no 
colony in the New World. 

For the first French eft'orts at actual colonization 
we must look southward on the miap of America 

loS 



THE FRENCH VOYAGEURS 

again, and trace the career of a different class of 
Frenchmen. It would have needed but a few minor 
changes in the shifting scenes of history to have 
caused North America to be colonized by French 
Protestants, instead of French Catholics. After 
Villegagnon and his Huguenots had vainly at- 
tempted a colony at Rio Janeiro in 1555, Jean Ri- 
baut, with other Huguenots, made an actual settle- 
ment seven years later upon what is now the South 
Carolina coast. At his first approach to land, the 
Indians assembled on, the shore, offering their own 
garments to the French officers, and pointing out 
their chief, who remained sitting on boughs of laurel 
and palm. All the early experience of the French- 
men with the natives was marked by this gentleness, 
and by a very ill -requited hospitality. Then sail- 
ing to what is now the St. John's River, and arriving 
on May -day, they called it "River of May," and 
found in it that charm which it has held for all ex- 
plorers, down to the successive military expeditions 
that occupied and abandoned it during our own civil 
war. Here they were again received by a picturesque 
crowd of savages, wading into the water up to their 
shoulders, and bringing little baskets of maize and 
of white and red mulberries, while others offered to 
help their visitors ashore. Other rivers also the 
Frenchmeii visited, naming them after rivers of 
France — tne Seine, the Loire — and then sailing far- 
ther north, they entered Port Royal Harbor, "finding 
the same one of the fayrest and greatest Havens of 
the worlde," says the quaint old translation of Thomas 
Hackit. Here they left behind a colony of thirty 
men, under Albert de la Pierria, to complete a fort 
called Charlesfort. It was the only Christian colony 

109 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

north of Mexico, and the site of the fort, though still 
disputed, was probably not far from Beaufort, South 
Carolina. The lonely colonists spent a winter of ab- 
solute poverty and wretchedness. They were fed 
by the Indians, and wronged them in return. They 
built for themselves vessels in which they sailed for 
France, reaching it after sufferings too great to tell. 

Still another French Protestant colony followed in 
1 564, led by Rene de Laudonniere. He too sought the 
" River of May " ; he too was cordially received by the 
Indians; and he built above what is now called St. 
John's Bluff, on the river of that name, a stronghold 
called Fort Caroline. "The place is so pleasant," 
wrote he, "that those which are melancholike would 
be enforced to change their humor." The adventures 
of this colony are told in the illustrated narrative of 
the artist Le Moyne. The illustrations are so graphic 
that we seem in the midst of the scenes described. 
They set before us the very costumes of the Frenchmen 
and the absence of costume among the Indians. We 
see the domestic habits, the religious sacrifices, the war- 
like contests, the Indian faces alone being convention- 
alized and made far too European for strict fidelity. 
We see also the animals that excited the artist's won- 
der, and especially the alligator, which is rendered 
with wonderful accuracy, though exaggerated in size. 
We see here also the column which had been erected 
by Ribaut on his previous voyage, and how the Ind- 
ians had decked it after worshipping there as at an 
altar. 

The career of the colony was a tragedy. Fort Caro- 
line was built; the colonists mutinied and sought to 
become buccaneers, "calling us cowards and green- 
horns," says Le Moyne, "for not joining in the pi- 
no 



THE FRENCH VOYAGEURS 

racy." Failing miserably in this, and wearing out the 
patience of their generous Indian friends, they almost 
perished of famine. The very fact that they were a 
Protestant colony brought with it a certain disadvan- 
tage, so long as the colonists were French. Protestant- 
ism in England reached the lower classes, but never in 
France. The Huguenots belonged, as a rule, to the 
middle and higher classes, and the peasants, so es- 
sential to the foundation of a colony, would neither 
emigrate nor change their religion. There were 
plenty of adventurers, but no agriculturists. The 
Englishman Hawkins visited and relieved them. Ri- 
baut came from France and again gave them aid, and 
their lives were prolonged only to meet cruel destruc- 
tion from the energy and perfidy of a Spaniard, Don 
Pedro de Menendez. He came with a great squad- 
ron of thirty-four vessels — his flag-ship being nearly 
a thousand tons burden— to conquer and settle the 
vast continent, then known as Florida. Parkman 
has admirably told the story of Menendez's victory; 
suffice it to say that he overcame the little colony, 
and then, after taking an oath upon the Bible, add- 
ing the sign of the cross, and giving a pledge, written 
and sealed, to spare their lives, he proceeded to mas- 
sacre every man in cold blood, sparing only, as Le 
Moyne tells us, a drummer, a fifer, and a fiddler. It 
is the French tradition that he hanged his prisoners 
on trees, with this inscription: " I do this not as to 
Frenchmen, but as to Lutherans." This was the 
same Menendez who in that same year (1565) had 
founded the Spanish colony of St. Augustine, employ- 
ing for this purpose the negro slaves he had brought 
from Africa — the first introduction, probably, of slave 
labor upon the soil now included in the United States. 

Ill 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

Menendez was the true type of the Spanish conqueror 
of that day — a race of whom scarcely one in a thou- 
sand, as poor Le Moyne declares, was capable of a 
sensation of pity. 

Menendez thanked God with tears for his victory 
over the little garrison. But his act aroused a ter- 
rible demand for vengeance in France, and this eager 
desire was satisfied by a Frenchman — this time by 
one who was probably not a Huguenot, but a Catho- 
lic. Dominique de Gourgues had been chained to the 
oar as a galley-slave when a prisoner to the Span- 
iards, and finding his king unable or unwilling to 
avenge the insult given to his nation in America, De 
Gourgues sold his patrimony that he might organize 
an expedition of his own. It is enough to say that 
he absolutely annihilated, in 1568, the colon}^ that 
Menendez had left behind him in Florida, and hanged 
the Spaniards to the same trees where they had 
hanged the French, nailing above them this inscrip- 
tion : " I do this not as to Spaniards or Moors (Maran- 
nes), but as to traitors, robbers, and murderers." 

All these southern and Protestant colonies failed at 
last. It was farther north, in the lands of the most 
zealous of Roman CathoHcs, and in the regions ex- 
plored long since by Carrier, that the brilliant career 
of French colonization in America was to have its 
course. Yet for many years the French voyages to 
the northeastern coasts of America were for fish- 
ing or trade, not religion: the rover went before the 
priest. The Cabots are said by Peter ^lartyr to have 
found in use on the banks of Newfoundland the word 
haccalaos as applied to codfish; and as this is a 
Basque word, the fact has led some writers to believe 
tliat the Basque fishermen had already reached there, 



THE FRENCH VOYAGEURS 

though this argument is not now generally admitted. 
Cape Breton, which is supposed to be the oldest 
French name on the continent of North America, 
belongs to a region described on a Portuguese map 
of 1520 as "discovered by the Bretons." There were 
French fishing-vessels off Newfoimdland in 151 7, and 
in 1578 there were as many as one hundred and fifty 
of these, all other nations furnishing but two hun- 
dred. Out of these voyages had grown temporary 
settlements, and the fur trade sprang up by degrees 
at Anticosti, at Sable Island, and especially at Ta- 
doussac. It became rapidly popular, so that when 
two nephews of Cartier obtained a monopoly of it 
for twelve years, the news produced an uproar, and 
the patent was revoked. Through this trade French- 
men learned the charm of the wilderness, and these 
charms attracted then, as always, a very questionable 
class of men. Cartier, in 1541, was authorized to 
ransack the prisons for malefactors. De la Roche, 
in 1598, brought a crew of convicts. De Monts, in 
1604, was authorized to impress idlers and vagabonds 
for his colony. To keep them in order, he brought 
both Catholic priests and Huguenot ministers, who 
disputed heartily on the way. " I have seen our cure 
and the minister," said Champlain, in Parkman's 
translation, "fall to with their fists on questions of 
faith. I cannot say which had the more pluck, or 
which hit the harder, but I know that the minister 
sometimes complained to the Sieur de Monts that he 
had been beaten." 

The Jesuits reached New France in 1 6 1 1 , and from 

that moment the religious phase of the emigration 

began. But their style of missionary effort was very 

unlike that severe type of religion which had made 

s 113 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

the very name of Christian hated in the days when 
Christian meant Spaniard, and when the poor Florida 
Indians had exclaimed, in despair, "The devil is the 
best thing in the world: we adore him." The two 
bodies of invaders held the same faith, acknowledged 
the same spiritual chief; but here the resemblance 
ended. From the beginning the Spaniards came as 
cruel and merciless masters; the Frenchmen, with 
few exceptions, as kindly and genial companions. 
The Spanish invaders were more liberal in the use 
of Scripture than any Puritan, but they were also 
much more formidable in the application of it. They 
maintained unequivocally that the earth belonged to 
the elect, and that they were the elect. The famous 
"Requisition," which was to be read by the Spanish 
commanders on entering each province for conquest, 
gave the full Bible narrative of the origin of the 
human race, announced the lordship of vSt. Peter, the 
gift of the New World to Spain by his successor the 
Pope; and deduced from all this the right to compel 
the natives to adopt the true religion. If they re- 
fused, they might rightfully be enslaved or killed. 
The learned Dr. Pedro Santander, addressing the 
King in 1557 in regard to De Soto's expedition, wrote 
thus: 

"This is the land promised by the Eternal Father to the 
faithful, since we are commanded by God in the Holy Script- 
ures to take it from them, being idolaters, and by reason 
of their idolatry and sin to put them all to the knife, leav- 
ing no living thing save maidens and children, their cities 
robbed and sacked, their walls and houses levelled to the 
earth." 

In another part of the same address the author de- 
scribes Florida as "now in possession of the Demon," 

114 



THE FRENCH VOYAGEURS 

and the natives as " lost sheep which have been snatch- 
ed away by the dragon, the Demon." There is no 
doubt that a genuine superstition entered into the 
gloomy fanaticism of the Spaniards. When Colum- 
bus brought back from one of his voyages some native 
chiefs whose garments and ornaments were embroid- 
ered with cats and owls, the curate Benialdez an- 
nounced without hesitation that these grotesque 
forms represented the deities whom these people 
worshipped. It is astonishing how much easier it is 
to justify one's self in taking away a man's property 
or his life when one is thoroughly convinced that he 
worships the devil. At any rate, the Spaniards acted 
upon this principle. Twelve years after the first dis- 
covery of Hispaniola, as Columbus himself writes, 
six-sevenths of the natives were dead through ill- 
treatment. 

But the French pioneers were perfectly indifferent 
to these superstitions; embroidered cat or Scriptural 
malediction troubled them very little. They came 
for trade, for exploration, for adventure, and also for 
religion ; but almost from the beginning they adapted 
themselves to the Indians, urged on them their relig- 
ion only in a winning way; and as to their ways of 
living, were willing to be more Indian than the Ind- 
ians themselves. The instances of the contrary 
were to be found, not among the Roman Catholic 
French, but among the Huguenots in Florida. 

The spirit which was exceptional in the benevolent 
Spanish monk Las Casas was common among French 
Jesuit priests. The more profoundly they felt that 
the Indians were by nature children of Satan, the 
more they gave soul and body for their conversion. 
P^re Le Caron, travelling with the Hurons, writes 

IIS 



C, 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

frankly about his infinite miseries, and adds: "But 
I must needs tell you what abundant consolation I 
found under all my troubles, for, alas! when one sees 
so many infidels needing nothing but a drop of water 
to make them children of God, he feels an inexpres- 
sible ardor to labor for their conversion and sacrifice 
to it his repose and his life." At times, to be sure, 
the Frenchmen would help one Indian tribe against 
another, and this especially against the Iroquois ; but 
in general the French went as friendly associates, the 
Spaniards as brutal task-masters. 

The first French colonists were rarely such in the 
English or even the Spanish sense. They were priests 
or soldiers or traders — the latter at first predominat- 
ing. They did not offer to buy the lands of the Ind- 
ians, as the English colonists afterwards did, for an 
agricultural colony was not their aim. They wished 
to wander through the woods with the Indians, to 
join in their hunting and their wars, and, above all, 
to obtain their furs. For this they were ready to 
live as the Indians lived, in all their discomforts; 
they addressed them as "brothers" or as " children " ; 
they married Indian wives with full church cere- 
monies. No such freedom of intercourse marked the 
life of any English settlers. The Frenchmen appar- 
ently liked to have the Indians with them; the sav- 
ages were always coming and going, in full glory, 
about the French settlements ; they feasted and slept 
beside the French; they were greeted with military 
salutes. The stately and brilliant Comte de Fronte- 
nac, the favorite officer of Turenne and the intimate 
friend of La Grande Mademoiselle, did not disdain, 
when Governor-general of Canada, to lead in person 
the war-dance of his Indians, singing and waving the 

ii6 



THE F R E N C H V Y A G E U R S 

hatchet, while a wigwam full of braves, stripped and 
painted for war, went dancing and howling after him, 
shouting like men possessed, as the French narratives 
say. He himself admits that he did it deliberately, 
in order to adopt their ways. {Je leiir mis moy-mesme 
la hache a la main . . . pour m'accommoder a leiirs 
jagons de faire.) Perhaps no single act ever done by 
a Frenchman explains so well how they won the 
hearts of the Indians. 

The pageantry of the Roman Catholic Church had, 
moreover, its charm for native converts; the French 
ofificers taught them how to fight; the French priests 
taught them how to die. These heroic missionaries 
could bear torture like Indians, and could forgive their 
tormentors as Indians could not. This combination 
of gentleness wath courage was something wholly new 
to the Indian philosophy of life. Pere Brebeuf wrote 
to Rome from Canada: "That which above all things 
is demanded of laborers in this vineyard is an un- 
failing sweetness and a patience thoroughly tested." 
And when he died by torture in 1649 he so conducted 
himself that the Indians drank his blood and the 
chief devoured his heart, in the hope that they might 
share his heroism. 

But while the missionaries were thus gentle and 
patient with their converts, their modes of appeal in- 
cluded the whole range of spiritual terrors. Pere Le 
Jeune wrote home earnestly for pictures of devils tor- 
menting the soul with fire, serpents, and red-hot pin- 
cers; Pere Garnier, in a manuscript letter copied by 
Parkman, asks for pictures of demons and dragons, 
and suggests that a single representation of a happy 
or beautiful soul will be enough. " The pictures must 
not be in profile, but in full face, looking squarely and 

117 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

with open eyes at the beholder, and all in bright 
colors, without flowers or animals, which only dis- 
tract." But, after all, so essentially different was 
the French temperament from the Spanish that the 
worst French terrors seemed more kindly and enjoy- 
able than the most cheerful form of Spanish devo- 
tion. The Spaniards offered only the threats of 
future torment and the certainty of labor and suffer- 
ing here. But the French won the Indians by pre- 
cisely the allurements that to this day draw strangers 
from all the world to Paris — a joyous out-door life 
and an unequalled cookery. "I remember," says 
Lescarbot, describing his winter in Canada, "that on 
the 14th of January (1607), of a Sunday afternoon, 
we amused ourselves with singing and music on the 
river Equille, and that in the same month we went 
to see the wheat-fields two leagues from the fort, and 
dined merrily in the sunshine." At these feasts there 
was hardly a distinction between the courtly foreigner 
and the naked Indian, and even the coarse aboriginal 
palate felt that here was some one who would teach a 
new felicity. Parkman tells us of a convert who 
asked, when at the point of death, whether he might 
expect any pastry in heaven like that with which the 
French had regaled him. 

In return for these blandishments it was not very 
hard for the Indians to accept the picturesque and 
accommodating faith of their guests. This was not 
at first done very reverently, to be sure. Sometimes 
when the early missionaries asked their converts for 
the proper words to translate the sacred phrases of 
the catechism, their mischievous proselytes would 
give them very improper words instead, and then 
would shout with delight whenever the priests began 

118 



THE FRENCH VOYAGEURS 

their lessons. Dr. George E. Ellis, in his valuable 
book The Red Man and the White Man, points out 
that no such trick was ever attempted, so far as we 
know, beneath the graver authority of the apostle 
Eliot, when his version of the Scriptures was in prog- 
ress. In some cases the native criticisms took the 
form of more serious remonstrance. Membertou, one 
of the most influential of the early Indian converts, 
said frankly that he did not like the petition for 
daily bread in the Lord's Prayer, and thought that 
some distinct allusion to moose meat and fish would 
be far better, 

To these roving and companionable Frenchmen, 
or, rather, to the native canoe-men, who were often 
their half-breed posterity, was given at a later pe- 
riod the name voyageiirs — a name still used for the 
same class in Canada, though it describes a race now 
vanishing. I have ventured to anticipate its date a 
little, and apply it to the French rovers of this early 
period, because it is one of these words which come 
spontaneously into use, tell their own story, and save 
much description. The character that afterwards 
culminated in the class called voyageurs was the char- 
acter which lay behind all the early French enter- 
prises. It implied those roving qualities which led 
the French to be pioneers in the fisheries and the fur 
trade ; and which, even after the arrival of the Jesuit 
missionaries, still prevailed under the blessing of the 
Church. The Spaniards were gloomy despots; the 
Dutch and Swedes were traders ; the English, at least 
in New England, were religious enthusiasts; the 
French were voyageurs, and even under the narrative 
of the most heroic and saintly priest we see some- 
thing of the same spirit. The best early type of the 

119 



HISTORY OF THE U xN I T E D vSTATES 

voyageur temperament combined with the courage of 
the Church militant is to be found in Samuel de 
Champlain. 

After all, there is no earthly immortality more secure 
than to have stamped one's name on the map; and 
that of Champlain will be forever associated with the 
beautiful lake which he first described and to which 
the French missionaries vainly attempted to attach 
another name. Champlain was a Frenchman of good 
family, who had served in the army, and had, indeed, 
been from his childhood familiar with the scenes of 
war, because he had dwelt near the famous city of 
Rochelle, the very hot-bed of the civil strife between 
Catholics and Huguenots. Much curiosity existing 
in France in regard to the great successes of Spain in 
America, he obtained naval employment in the Span- 
ish service, and visited, as commander of a ship, the 
Spanish-American colonies. This was in 1599, and 
he wrote a report on the condition of all these regions 
— a report probably fuller than anything else exist- 
ing at that time, inasmuch as the Spaniards syste- 
matically concealed the details of their colonial wealth. 
Little did they know that they had in the humble 
French captain of the Saint-Julian an untiring ob- 
server, who would reveal to the acute mind of Henry 
the Fourth of France many of the secrets of Spanish 
domination and would also disgust the French mind 
with pictures of the fanaticism of their rivals. In 
his report he denounced the cruelty of the Spaniards, 
described the way in which they converted Indians 
by the Inquisition, and made drawings of the burn- 
ings of heretics by priests. His observations on all 
commercial matters were of the greatest value, and 
he was the first, or one of the first, to suggest a ship- 



THE FRENCH VOYAGEURS 

canal across the isthmus of Panama. Full of these 
vivid impressions of Spanish empire, he turned his 
attention towards the northern part of the continent, 
in regions unsettled by the Spaniards, visiting them 
first in 1603, under Pont-Grave, and then in seven 
successive voyages. His narratives are minute, care- 
ful, and graphic ; he explored river after river with 
the Indians, eating and sleeping with them and re- 
cording laboriously their minutest habits. It is to 
his descriptions, beyond any others, that we must 
look for faithful pictures of the Indian absolutely un- 
affected by contact with white men ; and his voyages, 
translated by Dr. C. P. Otis and published by the 
Prince Society, with annotations by E. L. Slafter, 
have a value almost unique. 

Champlain himself may be best described as a de- 
vout and high-minded voyageiir. He was a good 
Catholic, and on some of his exploring expeditions 
he planted at short intervals crosses of white cedar 
in token of his faith ; but we see the bom rover through 
the proselyting Christian. Look, for instance, at the 
spirit in which he dedicates his voyage of 1604 to the 
Queen Regent: 

"M.VDAME, — Of all the most useful and excellent arts, that 
of navigation has always seemed to me to occupy the first 
place. For the more hazardous it is and the more numer- 
ous the perils and losses by which it is attended, so much the 
more is it esteemed and exalted above all others, being 
wholly unsuited to the timid and irresolute. By this art 
we obtain knowledge of different countries, regions, and 
realms. By it we attract and bring to our own land all 
kinds of riches, by it the idolatry of paganism is overthrown 
and Christianity proclaimed throughout all the regions of 
the earth. This is the art which from my early age has 
won my love and induced me to expose myself all my life 

121 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

to the impetuous waves of the ocean, and led me to explore 
the coasts of a part of America, especially of New France, 
where I have always desired to see the lily flourish, and also 
the only religion, catholic, apostolic, and Roman." 

Here we have the French lilies and the holy Catho- 
lic religion at the end, but the impulse of the voyageur 
through all the rest. We see here the born wanderer, 
as full of eagerness as Tennyson's Ulysses, 

"Always roaming with a hungry heart." 

And when we compare this frank and sailor-like ad- 
dress with the devout diplomacy, already quoted, of 
the Spanish doctor, we see in how absolutely different 
a spirit the men of these two nations approached the 
American Indians. 

Champlain was an ardent lover of out-door life 
and an intelligent field naturalist, and the reader 
finds described or mentioned in his narratives many 
objects now familiar, but then strange. He fully de- 
scribes, for instance, the gar-pike of western lakes, 
he mentions the moose under the Algonquin name 
" orignac," the seal under the name of " sea-lion," the 
musk-rat, and the horseshoe-crab. He describes al- 
most every point and harbor on the northeast coast, 
giving the names by which many of them are since 
known; for instance. Mount Desert, which he calls 
Isle des Monts Deserts, meaning simply Desert Moun- 
tains, so that the accent should not be laid, as is 
often the case, on the second syllable. We know 
from him that while yet unvisited by white men, the 
Indians of the Lake Superior region not only mined 
for copper, but melted it into sheets and hammered 
it into shape, making bracelets and arrow-heads. 



THE FRENCH VOYAGEURS 

Cartier, in 1535, had mentioned the same thing, but 
not so fully. And all Champlain's descriptions, 
whether of places or people, have the value that 
comes of method and minuteness. When he ends a 
chapter with, "This is precisely what I have seen of 
this northern shore," or, " This is what I have learned 
from those savages," we know definitely where his 
knowledge begins and ends, and whence he got his 
information. 

It is fortunate for the picturesqueness of his nar- 
rative that he fearlessly ventures into the regions of 
the supernatural, but always upon very definite and 
decided testimony. It would be a pity, for instance, 
to spare the Gougou from his pages. The Gougou 
was a terrible monster reported by the savages to 
reside on an island near the Bay of Chaleur. It was 
in the form of a woman, but very frightful, and so 
large that the masts of a tall vessel would not reach 
the waist. The Gougou possessed pockets, into 
which he — or she — used to put the Indians when 
caught ; and those who had escaped said that a single 
pocket would hold a ship. From this receptacle the 
victims were only taken out to be eaten. Several 
savages assured Champlain that they had seen the 
creature ; many had heard the horrible noises it made ; 
and one French adventurer had sailed so near its 
dwelling-place as to hear a strange hissing from that 
quarter, upon which all his Indian companions hid 
themselves. "What makes me believe what they 
say," says Champlain, "is the fact that all the sav- 
ages in general fear it, and tell such strange things 
about it that if I were to record all they say it would 
be regarded as a myth; but I hold that this is the 
dwelling-place of some devil that torments them in 

123 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

the above-mentioned manner. This is what I have 
learned about the Gougou." 

Champlain has left a minute description, illustrated 
by his own pencil, of his successive fortified resi- 
dences — first at what is now De Monts Island, named 
originally the Island of the Holy Cross, and afterwards 
at Port Royal and Quebec. Traces of the first - 
named encampment have been found in some can- 
non-balls, one of which is now in possession of the 
New England Historic-Genealogical Society. His 
journals vividly describe his winter discomforts in 
America, and the French devices that made them en- 
durable. He also gives, as has been said, minute de- 
scriptions of the Indians, their homes and their hunt- 
ing, their feasting and fighting, their courage and 
superstitions. His relations to them were, like those 
of other Frenchmen, for the most part kindly and 
generous. His most formidable act of kindness, if such 
it may be called, was when he first revealed to them 
the terrible power of fire-arms. He it was, of all men, 
who began for them that series of lessons in the mili- 
tary art by which the Frenchmen doubled the terrors 
of Indian warfare. Champlain has portrayed vividly 
for us with pen and pencil the early stages of that 
alliance which in later years made the phrase " French 
and Indian" the symbol of all that was most to be 
dreaded in the way of conflict. He describes pict- 
uresquely, for instance, an occasion when he and his 
Algonquin allies marched together against the Iro- 
quois; and his Indians told him if he could only kill 
three particular chiefs for them they should win the 
day. Reaching a promontory which Slafter believes 
to have been Ticonderoga, they saw the Iroquois ap- 
proaching, with the three chiefs in front, wearing 

124 



THE FRENCH V O Y A G E U R vS 

plumes. Champlain then told his own allies that he 
was very sorry they could not understand his lan- 
guage better, for he could teach them such order and 
method in attacking their enemies that they would 
be sure of victory ; but meanwhile he would do what 
he could. Then they called upon him with loud 
cries to stand forward; and so, putting him twenty 
paces in front, they advanced. Halting within thirty 
paces of the enemy, he rested his musket against his 
cheek and aimed at one of the chiefs. The musket — 
a short weapon, then called an arquebus — was loaded 
with four balls. Two chiefs fell dead, and another man 
was mortally woimded. The effect upon the Iroquois 
must have been like that of fire from heaven. These 
chiefs were dressed in armor made of cotton fibre, 
and arrow-proof, yet they died in an instant! The 
courage of the whole band gave way, and when an- 
other Frenchman fired a shot from the woods, they 
all turned and fled precipitately, abandoning camp 
and provisions — a whole tribe, and that one of the 
bravest, routed by two shots from French muskets. 
This was in July, 1609. 

On his voyage of the following year he also taught 
the same Indians how to attack a fortified place. 
Until that time their warlike training had taught 
them only how to track a single enemy or to elude 
him; or at most, gathered in solid masses, to pour in 
showers of arrows furnished with those sharp stone 
heads so familiar in our collections. We know from 
descriptions elsewhere given by Champlain that the 
chief strategy of the Indians lay in arranging and 
combining these masses of bowmen. This they plan- 
ned in advance by means of bundles of sticks a foot 
long, each stick standing for a soldier, with larger 

125 



y 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

sticks for chiefs. Going to some piece of level ground 
five or six feet square, the head chief stuck these 
sticks in the ground according to his own judgment. 
Then he called his companions, and they studied the 
arrangements. It was a plan of the battle — a sort 
of Indian Kriegspiel, like the German military game 
that has the same object. The warriors studied the 
sticks under the eye of the chief and comprehended 
the position each should occupy. Then they re- 
hearsed it in successive drills. We are thus able to 
understand — what would otherwise be difficult to 
explain — the compact and orderly array which Cham- 
plain's pictures represent. 

It was with a band of warriors thus trained that 
Champlain set forth from Quebec, in June, 1610, to 
search for a camp of Iroquois. The Indian guides 
went first, armed, painted, naked, light-footed, and 
five Frenchmen marched after them, arrayed in 
heavy corselets for defence, and bearing guns and 
ammunition. It was an alliance of hare and tor- 
toise, but in this case the hare kept in front. Cham- 
plain describes their discomforts as they tramped in 
their heavy accoutrements through pathless swamps 
with water reaching to their knees, far behind their 
impatient leaders, whose track they found it hard to 
trace. Suddenly they came upon the very scene 
where the fight had begun, and when the savages 
perceived them "they began to shout so that one 
could not have heard it thunder." In the midst of 
this tumult Champlain and his four companions 
approached the Iroquois fortress — built solidly of 
large trees arranged in a circle — and coolly be- 
gan to fire their muskets through the logs at the 
naked savages within. He thus describes the scene, 

126 



THE FRENCH VOYAGEURS 

which is also vividly depicted in one of his illus- 
trations : 

"You could see the arrows fly on all sides as thick as hail. 
The Iroquois were astonished at the noise of our muskets, 
and especially that the balls penetrated better than their 
arrows. They were so frightened at the effect produced 
that, seeing several of their companions fall wounded and 
dead, they threw themselves on the ground whenever they 
heard a discharge, supposing that the shots were sure. We 
scarcely ever missed firing two or three balls at one shot, 
resting our muskets most of the time on the side of their 
barricade. But seeing that our ammunition began to fail, 
I said to all the savages that it was necessary to break down 
their barricades and capture them by storm, and that in 
order to accomplish this they must take their shields, cover 
themselves with them, and thus approach so near as to be 
able to fasten stout ropes to the posts that supported the 
barricades, and pull them down by main strength, in that 
way making an opening large enough to permit them to 
enter the fort. I told them that we would meanwhile, by 
our musketry fire, keep off the enemy as they endeavored to 
prevent them from accomplishing this; also that a number 
of them should get behind some large trees which were near 
the barricade, in order to throw them down upon the enemy, 
and that others should protect them with their shields, in 
order to keep the enemy from injuring them. All this they 
did very promptly." 

Thus were the military lessons begun — not lessons 
in the use of fire-arms alone, but in strategy and of- 
fensive tactics, to which the same class of instructors 
were destined later to add an improved mode of for- 
tification. So completely did Champlain and his 
four Frenchmen find themselves the masters of the 
situation that when some young fellows, country- 
men of their own, and still better types of the voy- 
ageiir than they themselves were, came eagerly up 

127 



TIT STORY OF Till-: UNTTRD S T A T E vS 

the river in some trading barks to see what was going 
on, Champlain at once ordered the savages who were 
breaking down the fortress to stop, " so that the new- 
comers should have their share in the sport." He 
then gave the guns to the young French traders, and 
let them amuse themselves by shooting down a few 
defenceless Iroquois before the walls fell. 

At last the fort yielded. " This, then, is the victory 
obtained by God's grace," as Champlain proudly says. 
Out of a hundred defenders only fifteen were found 
alive. All these were put to death by tortures except 
one, whom Champlain manfully claimed for his share 
and saved; and he was perhaps the first to describe 
fully those frightful cruelties and that astonishing 
fortitude which have since been the theme of so 
much song and story, and to point out, moreover, 
that in these refinements of barbarity the women 
exceeded the men. Later they were joined on the 
war-path by a large force of friendly Indians, "who 
had never before seen Christians, for whom they con- 
ceived a great admiration." This admiration was 
not destined, as in the case of the Spaniards and Eng- 
lish, to undergo a stem reaction, but it lasted till the 
end of the French power on the American continent, 
and did a great deal to postpone that end. if the 
control of the New World could have been secured 
solely through the friendship and confidence of its 
native tribes, North America would have been wholly 
French and Roman Catholic to-dav. 



VI 

"AN ENGLISH NATION" 

SIR WALTER RALEGH, just on the eve of his 
fall from greatness, and after the failure of nine 
successive expeditions to America, wrote these words : 
"I shall yet live to see it an English nation." He 
was mistaken ; he did not live to see it, although his 
fame still lives, and what he predicted has in one 
sense come to pass. The vast difference that might 
exist between a merely English nation and an Eng- 
lish-speaking nation had never dawned upon his mind. 
All that History of the World which he meditated in 
the Tower of London contained no panorama of 
events so wonderful as that which time has unrolled 
in the very scene of his labors. 

We owe to Ralegh not merely the strongest and 
most persistent impulse towards the colonization of 
America, but also the most romantic and ideal as- 
pects of that early movement. He it is who has 
best described for us the charm exercised by this 
virgin soil over the minds of cultivated men. Had 
he not sought to win it for a virgin queen, it would 
still have been "Virginia" to him. With what in- 
satiable delight he describes the aspects of nature in 
this New World! 

' ' I never saw a more beawtifull countrey, nor more liuely 
prospectes, hils so raised heere and there ouer the vallies, 
9 129 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

I he riucr windin.tj into diuers bratmches, the plaines adioyn- 
ing without bush or stubble, all faire greene grasse, the 
ground of hard sand easy to march on, eyther for horse or 
foote, the deare crossing euery path, the birdes towardes the 
euening singing on euery tree, with a thousand seueral tunes, 
cranes and herons of white, crimson, and carnation pearch- 
ing on the riuers side, the ayre fresh with a gentle easterlie 
wind, and euery stone that we stooped to take vp promised 
eyther golde or siluer by his complexion." 



Ralegh represents the imaginative and glowing side 
of American exploration — an aspect which, down to 
the days of John vSmith, remained vividly prominent, 
and which had not wholly disappeared even under 
the graver treatment of the Puritans. 

The very adventures of some of the early colonies 
seem to retain us in the atmosphere of those vanish- 
ing islands and enchanted cities of which the early 
English seamen dreamed. Ralegh sent his first col- 
ony to Virginia in 1585, under Ralph Lane; in 1586 
he sent a ship with provisions to their aid, "who, 
after some time spent in seeking our colony up and 
down, and not finding them, returned with all the 
aforesaid provision unto England," the colonists hav- 
ing really departed "out of that paradise of the 
world," as Hakluyt says — in vessels furnished by 
Sir Francis Drake. Then followed Sir Richard Gren- 
ville with three vessels; but he could find neither 
relief-ship nor colony, and after some time spent in 
the same game of hide-and-seek, he landed fifteen 
men in the island of Roanoke, with two years' pro- 
visions, to take possession of the country. Then, in 
1587, went three ships containing a colony of one 
hundred and fifty, under John White, with a char- 
tered and organized corps of twelve assistants, under 

130 



"AN ENGLISH NATION" 

the sonorous name of "Governor and Assistants of 
the City of Ralegh in Virginia." They looked for 
Grenville's fifteen men, but found them not, and 
found only deer grazing on the melons that had 
grown within the roofless houses of Lane's colony. 
In spite of these dark omens, the new settlement was 
formed, and on the i8th of August, 1587 — as we read 
in Captain John Smith's Generall Historic of Virginia, 
New England, and the Summer Isles — " Ellinor, the 
Governour's daughter, and wife to Ananias Dare, was 
delivered of a daughter, in Roanoak, which, being 
the first Christian there borne, was called Virginia." 
Here at least was something permanent, definite, es- 
tablished — a birth and a christening, the beginning 
of "an English nation," transferred to American soil. 
Alas! in all this pathetic series of dissolving hopes 
and lost colonies, the career of the little Virginia is 
the most touching. Governor White, going back to 
England for supplies soon after the birth of his grand- 
child, left in the colony eight-nine men, seventeen 
women, and eleven children. He was detained three 
years, and on his return, in August, 1590, he found 
no trace of the colony except three letters " curiously 
carved" upon a tree — the letters CRO — and else- 
where, upon another tree, the word "CROATOAN." 
It had been agreed beforehand that should the col- 
ony be removed, the name of their destination should 
be carved somewhere conspicuously, and that if they 
were in distress a cross should be carved above. These 
trees bore no cross ; but the condition of the buildings 
and buried chests of the colony indicated the work 
of savages. "Though it much grieved me," writes 
the anxious and wandering father in his narrative, 
"yet it did much comfort me that I did know they 

131 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

were at Croatoan." Before the ships could seek the 
island of Croatoan they were driven out to sea; but 
apparently those in charge of the expedition had re- 
solved not to seek it, Governor White being but a 
passenger, and they having already anchored near 
that island and seen no signals of distress. Twenty 
years after, Powhatan confessed to Captain John 
Smith that he had been at the murder of the colonists. 
Strachey, secretary of the Jamestown settlement, 
found a report among the Indians of a race who 
dwelt in stone houses, which they had been taught 
to build by those English who had escaped the slaugh- 
ter of Roanoke — these being farther specified as 
" fower men, two boyes, and one yonge mayde," whom 
a certain chief had preserved as his slaves. Further- 
more, the first Virginia settlers found at an Indian 
village a boy of ten, with yellow hair and whitish 
skin, who may have been a descendant of these ill- 
fated survivors. Thus vanishes from history the last 
of the lost colonies and every trace of Virginia Dare. 
The first colonists farther north met with equal 
failure but less of tragedy. No children were bom 
to them, no Christian maiden ever drifted away in 
the unfathomable ocean of Indian mystery ; they con- 
sisted of men only, and this helped to explain their 
forlorn career. Bartholomew Gosnold crossed the 
Atlantic in 1602, following the route of Ribaut, who 
had wished to establish what are now called "ocean 
lanes" — at least so far as to keep the French vessels 
away from the Spaniards by following a more north- 
ern track. Gosnold landed at Cape Ann, then cross- 
ed Massachusetts Bay to Provincetown, and built a 
shelter on the Island of Cutty hunk (called by him 
Elizabeth Island), in Buzzard's Bay. His house was 

132 



"AN ENGLISH NATION" 

fortified with palisades, thatched with sedge, and fur- 
nished with a cellar, which has been identified in 
recent times. He saw deer on the island, but no in- 
habitants; and the soil was "overgrown with wood 
and rubbish" — the latter including sassafras, young 
cherry-trees, and grape-vines. Here he wintered, 
but if he ever meant to found a colony — which is 
doubtful— it failed for want of supplies, and his vessel, 
the Concord, returned with all on board, his eight sea- 
men and twenty planters, to England. They ar- 
rived there, as Gosnold wrote to his father, without 
"one cake of bread, nor any drink but a little vine- 
gar left." But he had a cargo of sassafras root which 
was worth more than vinegar or bread, though it 
yielded little profit to Gosnold, since it was confis- 
cated by Ralegh as sole patentee of the region visited . 
This fragrant shrub, then greatly prized as a medi- 
cine, drew to America another expedition, following 
after Gosnold 's, and headed by Martin Pring. He 
sailed the next year (1603) with two vessels and 
forty-four men, not aiming at colonization, but at 
trade. He anchored either at Plymouth or Edgar- 
town, built a palisaded fort to protect his sassafras- 
hunters, but found the Indians very inconvenient 
neighbors, and returned home. Weymouth — or 
Waymouth — came two years later, and sailed sixty 
miles up the Kennebec or Penobscot — it is not yet 
settled which — and pronounced it "the most rich, 
beautiful, large, and secure harboring river that the 
world affordeth." But he did not stay long, and 
except for his enthusiasm over the country and the 
fact that he carried home five Indians, his trip count- 
ed for no more than Pring's. Meanwhile De Monts 
and Champlain were busy in exploring on the part 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

of the French; and Sir Ferdinando Gorges was plan- 
ning one more fruitless colony for the English. 

Gorges, perhaps a kinsman of Ralegh, knew Wey- 
mouth, and took charge for three years of some of 
his Indian captives. With Sir John Popham he se- 
cured the incorporation of two colonies — to be called 
the First and the Second, and to be under charge of 
the Council of Virginia, appointed by the crown. 
The First, or London Colony, was to be planted in 
"South Virginia," from north latitude 34° to 41°, 
and the Second, or Plymouth Colony, was to be 
planted in "North Virginia," between 38° and 45° 
north latitude. The two colonies thus overlapped 
three degrees ; but neither colony was to extend more 
than fifty miles inland, and there was to be an inter- 
val of a hundred miles between their nearest settle- 
ments. That gap of a hundred miles afterwards 
caused a great deal of trouble. 

Three ships with a hundred settlers went from 
Plymouth, England, in 1607, reaching the mouth of 
the Sagadahoc, or Kennebec, August 8th. They held 
religious services according to the Church of England, 
read their patent publicly, and proceeded to dig wells, 
build houses, and erect a fort. Misfortune pursued 
them. Nearly half their number went back with the 
vessels. The winter was unusually severe. Their 
storehouse was burned; their president, George Pop- 
ham, died; their patron in England, Sir John Pop- 
ham, died also; their "admiral," Ralegh Gilbert, was 
recalled to England by the death of his brother. In 
the spring all returned, and another colony was add- 
ed to the list of unsuccessful attempts. It is useless 
to speculate on what might have been the difference 
in the destiny of New England had it succeeded; it 

134 



"AN ENGLISH NATION" 

failed, and the world never cares very much for fail- 
ures. The contemporary verdict was that " the coun- 
try was branded by the return of that plantation as 
being over-cold, and, in respect of that, not habitable 
for Englishmen." But the fortunate fact that two 
colonies were sent out together made the year 1607 
the beginning of successful colonization in America, 
after all. The enterprise succeeded, not in New Eng- 
land, then called North Virginia, but in South Vir- 
ginia, part of which territory still retains the name 
of the Virgin Queen. It succeeded not under the 
high-sounding name of Sir Ferdinando Gorges, but 
under the more plebeian auspices of John Smith. 

John Smith was the last of the romantic school of 
explorers. It is impossible to tell who wrote all his 
numerous books, or where to draw the line in regard 
to his innumerable adventures. We shall never 
know the whole truth about Pocahontas or Powhatan. 
No matter; he was the ideal sailor, laboring to be 
accurate in all that relates to coasts and soundings, 
absolutely credulous as to all the wilder aspects of 
enterprise in a new world. He maintained the tra- 
ditions of wonder; he would not have been surprised 
at Job Hartop's merman, or Ponce de Leon's old men 
made young, or Ralegh's headless Indians, or Cham- 
plain's Gougou. The flavor of all his narratives is 
that of insatiable and joyous adventure, not yet 
shadowed by that awful romance of supernatural 
terror which came in with the Puritans. 

Yet his first service was in his accuracy of descrip- 
tion. It is a singular fact pointed out by Kohl, that 
while the sixteenth century placed upon our maps 
with much truth the coasts of Newfoundland, Labra- 
dor, and Canada, the coasts of New England and 

135 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

New York were unknown till the beginning of the 
seventeenth. When Hudson sailed south of Cape 
Cod and entered the harbor of New Y^ork, he was 
justified in saying that he entered " an unknown sea." 
If the shore north of Cape Cod was not an unknown 



. Sc.tkou art BrafFc wittiout lit CfOldt v,'tthin. . 



'Tffi, utiiraftfbiojsji Sinitlu t^cb W Icarc.) 

•jr /^t^ thy Tamc.to ntakc 3iafc Steele ouc^i'cai-c. 

f'ZThiilc^ thou art T'rtuu, SoutkHampti 




MAP OF NEW ENGLAND COAST 
(From Captain John Smith's Historie of Virginia) 



region, it was due largely to Smith. While his com- 
panions were plundering or kidnapping negroes, at 
the time he first visited those shores, in 1614, he 
was drawing "a map from point to point, isle to isle. 

136 



"AN ENGLISH NATION" 

and harbor to harbor, with the soundings, sands, 
rocks, and landmarks." He first called the region 
New England, and first gave the names of Charles 
River, Plymoutjt}^ Cape Ann ; while other titles which 
he bestowed— as Boston, Cambridge, Hull — have not 
disappeared, but only shifted their places. He caused 
thousands of his maps to be printed, and yet com- 
plained he might as well have tried "to cut rocks 
with oyster shells" as to spread among others his in- 
terest in this matter. Fifteen years after he could 
only report the same discouragement. "The coast 
is yet still but as a coast unknown and undiscovered. 
I have had six or seven plots of those northern parts, 
so unlike each to other for resemblance of the country 
as they did me no more good than so much waste 
paper." 

This illustrates Smith's methods. But it was in 
his first expedition to Virginia that he placed himself 
on record as the first successful colonizer of America. 
At the time, however, he would have claimed no 
higher title than "Adventurer," that being the name 
by which the members of the London Company were 
known. The men who were sent out on this expe- 
dition were authorized to mine for the precious metals, 
to coin money, and to collect a revenue for twenty-one 
years from all vessels. The dream of wealth had 
been transplanted from Spain to England, and its sup- 
posed scene of enrichment from Mexico to " Virginia." 
The English plays of the period show this. "I tell 
thee," says Seagull, in Marston's play of "Eastward, 
Ho!" written in 1605, " golde is more plentifull there 
than copper is with us; and for as much redde cop- 
per as I can bring I'll have thrise the weight in gold. 
Why, man, all theyre dripping pans . . . are pure 

137 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

gould, and all the chaines with which they chaine up 
their streets are massie gold ; and for rubies and dia- 
monds, they go forth in Holydayes and gather 'hem 
by the seashore to hang on their children's coates and 
stick in their children's caps." And, to complete the 
picture, he promises "no more law than conscience, 
and not too much of eyther." 

Such were the hopes with which the three ships 
of the Virginia Company of London sailed from the 
Downs, December 30, 1606. It was a modest expedi- 
tion, but it carried the fortunes of the " English 
nation" on board. These vessels were the Sarah 
Constant, of one hundred tons, commanded by Captain 
Christopher Newport, fleet captain; the Goodspeed, 
of forty tons. Captain Bartholomew Gosnold; and the 
Discovery, of about twenty tons, Captairf John Rat- 
cliff e. The emigrants, or "planters," all of them 
men, numbered one hundred and twenty, more than 
half of them being classed as "gentlemen," together 
with laborers, tradesmen, and mechanics, and two 
"chirurgeons." Sailing by the southern route- -the 
way of the West Indies — they reached Chesapeake 
Bay in the early morning of April 26th, and there 
for the first time opened a sealed box containing the 
orders from the King. This box designated as coun- 
cillors the three sea-captains, with Edward Maria 
Wingfield (president), John Smith, John Martin, and 
John Kendall. Smith, however, because of some 
suspicion of mutinous bearing on the voyage, was 
excluded from office until June loth. 

It is possible that something of personal feeling 
may have entered into Smith's low opinion of these 
first colonists. He says of them, in his Generall 
Historie : 

138 



"AN ENGLISH NATION" 

" Being for most part of such tender educations, and small 
experience in Martiall accidents, because they found not 
English Cities, nor such fair houses, downe pillowes, tav- 
ernes, and ale-houses in euery breathing place, neither such 
plentie of gold and silver and dissolute libertie as they ex- 
pected, had little or no care of anything but to pamj^er their 
bellies, to fly away with our Pinnaces, or procure their 
meanes to returne for England. For the Country was to 
them, a miser}'-, a ruine, a death, a hell, and their reports 
here and their actions there according." 

They planted a cross at Fort Henry, naming it for 
the Prince of Wales, and they named the opposite 
cape for his brother, the Duke of York, afterwards 
Charles L The next day they named another spot 
Point Comfort. Ascending the Powhatan River, 
called by them the James, they landed at a peninsula 
about fifty miles from the mouth, and resolved to 
build their town there. They went to work, sending 
Smith and others farther up the river to explore, and 
repelling the first Indian attack during their absence. 
In June, Newport sailed for England, leaving three 
months' provisions for the colonists. Again the ex- 
periment was to be tried; again Englishmen found 
themselves alone in the New World. Captain John 
Smith, always graphic, has left a vivid picture of the 
discomforts of that early time : 

"When I first went to Virgiviia, I well remember, wee did 
hang an awning (which is an old saile) to three or foure trees 
to shadow us from the Sunne, our walls were rales of wood, 
our seats unhewed trees, till we cut plankes, our Pulpit a bar 
of wood nailed to two neighboring trees, in foule weather we 
shifted into an old rotten tent, for we had few better, and 
this came by the way of adventure for new; this was our 
Church, till wee built a homely thing like a barne, set upon 
Cratchets, covered with rafts, sedge, and earth, so was also 

139 



TIT STORY OF THE U N I T E T) STATES 

the walls: the best of our houses of the like curiosity, but 
the most part farre much worse workmanship, that could 
neither well defend wind nor raine, yet wee had daily Com- 
mon Prayer morning and evening, every Sunday two Ser- 
mons, and every three moneths the holy Communion, till our 
Minister died, but our Prayers daily, with an Homily on 
Sundaies we continued two or three yeares after till more 
Preachers came, and surely God did most mercifully heare 
us, till the continuall inundations of mistaking directions, 
factions, and numbers of unprovided Libertines neere con- 
sumed us all, as the Israelites in the wildernesse." 

The place was unhealthy ; they found no gold ; the 
savages were hostile ; by September one-half of their 
own number h^d died, including Gosnold, and their 
provisions were almost exhausted. The council was 
reduced to three — Ratcliffe, Smith, and Martin. 
Later still their settlement was burned, and their 
food reduced to meal and water; the intrepid leader- 
ship of Smith alone saved them; and for months the 
colony struggled, as did the Plymouth colony a dozen 
years later, for mere existence. Its materials from 
the beginning were strangely put together — one 
mason, one blacksmith, four carpenters, fifty-two 
gentlemen, and a barber! The "first supply" in 
1608 brought one hundred and twenty more, but not 
in much better combination — thirty-three gentle- 
men, twenty-one laborers, six tailors, with apothe- 
caries, perfumers, and goldsmiths, but still only one 
mechanic of the right sort. The "second supply," 
in the same year, brought seventy persons, including 
"eight Dutchmen and Poles"; and, best of all, two 
women — Mistress Forrest and Anne Burras her maid 
— joined the company ; and soon after the maid was 
married to John Laydon, "which was the first mar- 
riage," Smith triumphantly says, "we had in Vir- 

140 



"AN ENGLISH NATION" 

ginia." Smith had by this time become President 
of the Council, and was at last its only member. 
They had received supplies from England, but the 
continuance of these was very uncertain. Newport 




MAP OF JAMESTOWN SETTLEMENT 
(From Captain John Smith's Historic of Virginia) 

on his return trip had foolishly pledged himself not 
to return without a lump of gold, the discovery of a 
passage to the North Sea, some of the settlers of the 
lost colony, or a freight worth £2000. Unless this 

141 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

pledge was fulfilled, the colony was to be abandoned 
to its own resources ; and fulfilled it never was. 

Early in (Jctober, 1609, Smith sailed for England, 
leaving nearly five hundred settlers, with horses, cat- 
tle, cannon, fishing-nets, and provisions. He never 
returned, though he made a successful voyage to New 
England. He apparently went away under a cloud, 
but with him went the fortunes of the colony. There 
followed a period known as "the starving time," 
which ended in the abandonment of the settlement, 
with its fifty or sixty houses and its defence of pali- 
sades. The colonists were met as they descended the 
river, in April, 1610, by Lord Delaware (or De la 
Warr) as he ascended with another party of settlers ; 
and thenceforward the Virginia settlement was se- 
cure. Yet it did not grow rapidly; it was languish- 
ing in 16 1 8, and it had an accession of doubtful bene- 
fit in 1 61 9, when we read in Smith's Generall Historie, 
as the statement of John Rolfe, "About the last of 
August came in a Dutch man-of-warre, and sold us 
twenty Negars." In 162 1 came a more desirable ac- 
cession, through the shipment by the company of 
' ' respectable young women ' ' for wives of those col- 
onists who would pay the cost of transportation — at 
first one hundred and twenty pounds of tobacco, 
afterwards one hundred and fifty. In July, 1620, 
the colony was four thousand strong, and shipped to 
England forty thousand pounds of tobacco. This 
was raised with the aid of many bound apprentices 
— boys and girls picked up in the streets of London 
and sent out — -and of many "disorderly persons" 
sent by order of the King. But in the year 1624 only 
1275 colonists were left in Virginia. 

The colony would have been more prosperous, 

142 



"AN ENGLISH NATION" 

Captain John Smith thought, without the tobacco. 
"Out of the relicks of our miseries," he says, "time 
and experience had brought that country to a great 
happinesse, had they not so much doted on their to- 
bacco, on whose firmest foundations there is small 
stability, there being so many good commodities be- 
side." But their chief trouble, as he wrote from 
London in 163 1 — the last year of his life — was al- 
ways in the uncertain sway of the V^irginia Company 
in London: "Their purses and lives were subject to 
some few here in London, who were never there, that 
consumed all in Arguments, Projects, Conclusions, 
altering everything yearely, as they altered opinions, 
till they had consumed more than ;^200,ooo and 
neere 8000 men's lives." 

Another voyager, also EngHsh, but in Dutch em- 
ploy, following Smith across the ocean, rivalled his 
fame. It was a wondrous period, certainly, when a 
continent lay unexplored before civilized men, and a 
daring navigator could at a single voyage add to the 
map a whole mighty river, whereas now it sometimes 
takes many lives to establish a few additional facts as 
to the minor sources of some well-known stream. 
The name of Henry Hudson is as indelibly associated 
with the river he discovered as is the Rhine with the 
feudal castles that make its summits picturesque. 
The difference is that after the last stone of the last 
ruin has crumbled, the name of the great navigator 
will be as permanent as now. While Hudson was 
exploring what he called "The Great North River of 
New Netherland," Champlain was within a few 
miles of him, on the lake that was to bear his name. 
Both he and Hudson were fortunate enough to have 
names sufficiently characteristic to keep their places 

143 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

on the map, while " Smith's Isles" soon yielded to the 
yet vaguer appellation of the " Isles of Shoals." 

It has been well pointed out in a sketch of the 
Dutch in America- -that of Mr. Fernow, in the Nar- 
rative and Critical History of America, edited by Jus- 
tin Winsor — that the early Dutch explorations did 
not proceed from the love of discovery or of gold- 
seeking, but were an incident of European wars. 
Carlyle says that the Dutch might have kept on mak- 
ing butter and cheese forever had not the Spaniards 
hurried them into a war in order to make them be- 
lieve in St. Ignatius. The Spaniards, he says, " never 
made them believe in him, but succeeded in breaking 
their own vertebral column and raising the Dutch 
into a great nation." The Dutch West India Com- 
pany was, according to Mr. Fernow, a political move- 
ment, planned in 1606 and revived in 16 18 — a scheme 
to destroy the results of Spanish conquest in America, 
under cover of finding a passage to Cathay. 

Henry Hudson sailed in the employ of this com- 
pany, in the vessel Half -Moon, April 4, 1609. He 
undertook the search for a northwest passage — to 
which there was an opening north of Virginia, as his 
friend Captain John Smith had assured him. Sail- 
ing up the river which now bears his name, he found 
no passage, but brought back reports of fur-bearing 
animals, which revived the Dutch Company and se- 
cured for it a charter, granted in 162 1. Before this 
Adrian Block had built a log fort on Manhattan Isl- 
and, in 1614, and had called the settlement New Am- 
sterdam; another fort was built near what is now 
Albany ; another in what is now Gloucester, New Jer- 
sey; and in 1626 Peter Minuit bought the whole of 
Manhattan Island from the Indians. All these set- 

144 



"AN ENGLISH NATION" 

tlements were supposed to be within the hundred 
miles which were to separate the North and South 
Virginia settlements. The South Virginia colonists 
tried to drive out the Dutch in 1613, and Governor 
Bradford, in Plymouth, remonstrated in 1627 against 
the intruders, but they remained. The secret belief 
of the Dutch was that, after all, the English had se- 
cured only the two shells, while they had the oyster. 
For years the colony was rather like a commercial 
enterprise than like anything of larger expectations; 
but after a time, under the teaching of experience, a 
more liberal policy was practised, and settlers came 
from many sources — dissatisfied religionists from New 
England, escaped servants from Virginia, and rich 
and poor from Holland. In 1643 there were eighteen 
different nationalities represented in New Amster- 
dam. 

The English had thus obtained a foothold in Vir- 
ginia, and the Dutch had established themselves in 
New Netherland, both being led by the love of dis- 
covery, or of trade, or of revenge against the Span- 
iards. All efforts had thus far failed to build a col- 
ony in New England. Captain Smith wrote that he 
was not so foolish as to suppose that anything but 
the prospect of great gain would induce people to 
settle in such a place. He was right; it was done 
with the prospect of great gain, but of a kind of 
which he had not dreamed. It is partly this new 
motive and partly the pivotal part it played in the 
colonization of America that has always given to the 
little colony of Plymouth an historic importance out 
of all proportion to its numbers, its wealth, or even 
its permanence of separate life. 

The Pilgrims, as they have been always called, had 

145 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

separated for conscience' sake from the Church of 
England, had removed from England to Holland, and 
had dwelt there in that "common harbor of all her- 
esies," as Bishop Hall called it, there increasing to 
the number of five hundred. The Dutch magistrates 
said, "These English have lived among us now these 
twelve years, and yet we have never had any suit 
or accusation against them." But it seemed likely 
that the wars between Spain and Holland would be 
renewed, making their place of refuge unsafe; and 
the children of the Pilgrims were growing up, whom 
their parents wished to hear speaking English rather 
than Dutch; and they desired also to do something 
"for the propagating and advancing of the Gospel of 
Christ in the remote parts of the world." So a hun- 
dred of their younger and stronger men and women 
were selected to go to America, and a portion of them 
sailed from Delft Haven in July, 1620; their pious 
minister, John Robinson, invoking a blessing upon 
their departure, and warning them, "The Lord hath 
more truth yet to seek out of His holy Word." Of 
their two ships, the Mayflower alone completed her* 
voyage, and after touching at three English ports 
she still had a voyage of sixty-three days. The 
Speedwell put back in consequence of alarms need- 
lessly spread by her captain, who had already re- 
pented of his promise to remain a year with the 
colony, and took this cowardly way to obtain relief 
from that pledge. 

On the eastern coast of Massachusetts there is a 
cape which stretches far into the sea, "shaped like a 
sickle," as Captain John Smith said, but named less 
poetically "Cape Cod" by Gosnold, because of the 
multitudes of fish with which he had "pestered" his 

146 



"AN ENGLISH NATION" 

vessel there. If on the 9th of November (Old Style), 
in 1620, any stray Indian had been looking from the 
bluff where Highland Light now stands, he would have 
seen a lonely and weather-beaten vessel creeping 
slowly towards the land. It was the Mayflower, now 
more than two months at sea. She had met with 
such storms and had grown so leaky that it had been 
seriously proposed by the sailors, when half across 
the Atlantic, to return. But for the fact that some 
passenger had happened to bring a great iron screw 
with his baggage, it is doubtful if the little vessel could 
have made the passage. As it was, she was heavy 
and slow, and the passengers were full of joy when 
they saw Cape Cod. They very well knew what land 
it was, for the mates of the vessel had been there 
twice before, while one passenger had actually been 
as far as Virginia. But they did not mean to re- 
main at Cape Cod, or indeed in New England at all. 
Ever since the failure of the Popham colony in 
Maine, twelve years before. New England had been 
thought to be a "cold, barren, mountainous, rocky 
desert," and had been abandoned as "uninhabitable 
by Englishmen." So the Mayflower did not at first 
anchor at Cape Cod, but tacked and sailed south- 
ward for half a day, meaning to reach the Hudson 
River. Then she got among dangerous shoals and 
currents, the wind, moreover, being contrary ; and the 
captain, anxious f(3r his vessel and in a hurry to land 
his passengers, put about again and made Cape Cod 
Harb()r. 

"But here I cannot but stay and make a pause," 
says the old writer who first describes this voyage, 
"and stand half amazed at these poor people's con- 
dition; and so I think will the reader, too, when he 

147 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATEb 

well considers the same. For having passed through 
many troubles, both before and upon the voyage, as 
aforesaid, they had now no friends to welcome them, 
nor inns to entertain and refresh them, no houses, 
much less towns, to repair unto." Before them lay 
an unknown wilderness. The nearest English set- 
tlement was five hundred miles away. They had 
expected to arrive in September, and it was Novem- 
ber; they had expected to reach the Hudson River, 
and it was Cape Cod. "Summer being done," says 
the same writer — Bradford — "all things stand for 
them to look upon with a weather-beaten face; and 
the whole country being full of woods and thickets, 
represented a wild and savage hue. If they looked 
behind them there was the mighty ocean which they 
had passed, and was now a main bar and gulf to 
separate them from all the civil parts of the world." 
To be sure, they had still a ship, but the captain 
warned them daily that they must look out for a 
place to found their colony; that he could wait but 
little longer; that the provisions were diminishing 
every day, and he must and would keep enough for 
himself and crew to use on their return. Some of the 
crew were even less friendly in what they said, for 
some of these were heard to threaten that unless the 
place for their new colony were soon found, "they 
would turn them and their goods on shore and leave 
them." 

Such was the position of the Pilgrims when the 
Mayflower lay at anchor in Cape Cod Harbor. The 
first thing to be done was to select a place for their 
settlement. This, however, could not be done till 
the shallop, or sail-boat, was ready;. and it would 
take several days, as they found. So they went to 

148 



"AN ENGLISH NATION" 

worK on this, and meanwhile, for the sake of a mu- 
tual understanding among themselves, this agree- 
ment was drawn up and signed by all the men on 
board : 

"In the name of God, Amen. We, whose names are un- 
derwritten, the loyall subiects of our dread soveraigne lord, 
King James, by the grace of God, of Great Britaine, France, 
and Ireland King, Defender of the Faith, etc., having 
undertaken for the glory of God and the advancement of 
the Christian faith, and honour of our King and country, 
a voyage to plant the first colony in the northerne parts 
of Virginia, doe, by these presents, solemnly and mutually, 
in the presence of God and one of another, covenant and 
combine ourselves together into a civill body politike, for 
our better ordering and preservation, and furtherance of 
the ends aforesaid; and by vertue hereof to enact, constitute, 
and frame such iust and equal lawes, ordinances, acts, con- 
stitutions, and offices, from time to time, as shall be thought 
most meet and convenient for the generall good of the Col- 
ony; vnto which we promise all due submission and obedi- 
ence. In witnesse whereof we haue hereunto subscribed 
our names. Cape Cod, ii of November, in the year of the 
raigne of our soveraigne lord King lames, of England, France, 
and Ireland i8, and of Scotland 54. Anno Domini 1620." 

Here was the "social compact" in good earnest — 
a thing which philosophers have claimed to be im- 
plied in all human government, but which has rarely 
been put in a shape so unequivocal. Robinson's let- 
ter of advice to the company had recognized before 
they left Holland that they were "to become a body- 
politic," using among themselves civil government 
and choosing their own rulers. As with most per- 
sons who write important documents, their work seem- 
ed less imposing to themselves than it has since ap- 
peared to others. They thought of discipline rather 
than of philosophy ; they had secured a good working 

149 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

organization, and it was not till long after that the 
act was heralded as "the birth of popular constitu- 
tional liberty." Such as it was, it was signed by 
forty-one men, mostly heads of families. Against 
each name was placed the number represented by 
him, making a total of one hundred and one persons, 
though revised estimates give one or two more. 

This being signed, the people were eager to go on 
shore and examine the new country, even by ventur- 
ing a little way. So a party landed for fuel, a por- 
tion of them being armed; they saw neither person 
nor house, but brought home a boat-load of juniper 
boughs, "which smelled very sweet and strong," and 
which became a frequent fuel with them. Then the 
women went ashore under guard the next Monday to 
do their washing, and we may well suppose that some 
of the twenty-eight children begged hard to go also, 
and offered much desultory aid in bringing water, 
while the men guarded and the women scrubbed. 
The more they knew of the land, the more they 
wished to know, and at last it was agreed that Cap- 
tain Miles Standish and sixteen men, "with every 
man his musket, sword, and corselet," should be 
sent along the cape to explore. The muskets were 
matchlocks, and the corselet was a coat of mail, a 
heavy garment to be worn amid tangled woods and 
over weary sands. 

The journal kept by this first party has been pre- 
served. They found walnuts, strawberries, and vines, 
and came to some springs, where they sat down and 
drank their first New England water, as one of them 
says, "with as much delight as ever we drunk drink 
in all our lives." They saw no Indians, but found 
their houses and graves; they found also a basket 

150 



"AN ENCxLISH NATION" 

holding three or four bushels of Indian-corn of yel- 
low, red, and blue, such as still grows on Cape Cod. 
This they took with them on their return, meaning 
to pay for it, which they afterwards did. Then they 
returned, and a few days after another party, twice 
as large, and including the captain of the Mayflower, 
set off in the shallop to make further explorations. 
All their adventures are preserved to us in the most 
graphic way by contemporary narratives. Then a 
third party of eighteen went out, including Carver, 
Standish, Bradford, and other leading men. They 
were attacked by Indians ; they lost their rudder and 
their mast; they drifted at last on Clark's Island, 
kept the Sabbath there, and on December nth. Old 
Style — commonly reckoned, but not quite accurately, 
as corresponding to December 2 2d, New Style — they 
made their first landing on Plymouth Rock. This 
place being approved, they returned to the May- 
fiozver, and the vessel came into harbor five days 
later. 

There they spent the winter — their first experience 
of a New England winter! They were ill housed, ill 
fed ; part of them remained for several months on board 
the ship ; one-half of them died during the first winter 
of scurvy and other diseases. At times, according 
to the diary of the heroic Bradford, there were but 
six or seven sound persons who could tend upon the 
sick and dying,/' fetched them wood, made them fires, 
dressed them meat, made their beds, washed their 
loathsome clothes, clothed and unclothed them," two 
of these nurses being their spiritual and military lead- 
ers, Elder Brewster and Captain Miles Standish. The 
New Plymouth Colony never grew to be a strong one ; 
its later history is merged in that of the Massachusetts 

151 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

Bay Colony ; but its success may be said to have been 
the turning-point in the existence of Ralegh's "Eng- 
lish nation." The situation is thus briefly stated by 
the ablest historian who wrote in this continent be- 
fore the Revolution, Governor Hutchinson: 



"These were the founders of the colony of Plymouth. 
The settlement of this colony occasioned the settlement of 
Massachusetts Bay, which was the source of all the other 
colonies of New England. Virginia was in a dying state, 
and seemed to revive and flourish from the example of New 
England. I am not preserving from oblivion the names of 
heroes whose chief merit is the overthrow of cities, prov- 
inces, and empires, but the names of the founders of a flour- 
ishing town and colony, if not of the whole British empire 
in America." 



In September, 1628, there came sailing into the 
harbor of Naumkeag, afterwards called Salem, a ship 
bearing John Endicott, one of the six patentees of 
the "Dorchester Company," afterwards enlarged into 
the " Governor and Company of Massachusetts Bay." 
Endicott had been appointed governor, and found on 
shore only a few settlers, Roger Conant and others, 
part of them strays from Plymouth, who were quite 
disposed to be impatient of his authority. There re- 
mains no record of his voyage, but an ample record of 
that of his successor in the emigration. Rev. Francis 
Higginson, who came as the spiritual leader — with 
his colleague Skelton — of the first large party of the 
Massachusetts Bay Colony. They came in summer 
(1629), and all their early impressions were in poetic 
contrast to the stem landing of the Pilgrims. Francis 
Higginson says, in his journal as preserved in Hutch- 
inson's Collection; 



"AN ENGLISH NATION" 

" By noon we were within three leagues of Cape Ann ; and 
as we sailed along the coasts we saw every hill and dale and 
every island full of gay woods and high trees. The nearer 
we came to the shore the more flowers in abundance, some- 
times scattered abroad, sometimes joined in sheets nine or 
ten yards long, which we supposed to be brought from the low 
meadows by the tide. Now what with fine woods and green 
trees by land, and these yellow flowers painting the sea, 
made us all desirous to see our new paradise of New Eng- 
land, whence we saw such forerunning signals of fertility 
afar off." 

There came in this expedition five (or possibly 
six) ships, of which the Mayflower was one. They 
brought two hundred persons, whereas only some 
forty had arrived with Endicott; in the following 
year eight hundred came with Winthrop, who, being 
governor of the company itself, superseded all other 
authorities. It was the most powerful body of col- 
onists that had yet reached America. Its members 
were by no means limited to Salem, nor did this long 
remain the centre of the colony. Charlestown was 
settled in 1629, and Dorchester, Roxbury, Boston, 
Medford, Watertown, and Cambridge in 1630. 

The company itself was soon transplanted bodily 
from England. It was an organized government 
under a royal charter ; the freemen were to meet four 
times a year and choose a governor, deputy-governor, 
and eighteen assistants, who were to meet once a 
month, and exercise all the functions of a State. As 
Henry Cabot Lodge has tersely said, "It was the 
migration of a people, not the mere setting forth of 
colonists and adventurers." Considered as a colony, 
it was far larger and richer than that at Plymouth; 
it had chosen a more favorable situation, and it en- 
countered less of hardship, though it had quite 

153 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

enough. Its leaders had not expected, in advance, 
to break with the Church of England, as had been 
done by the "Separatists" at Plymouth. "We will 
not say," said Francis Higginson, on looking back to 
the receding shores of England — "we will not say, 
as the Separatists were wont to say at their leaving 
of England, 'Farewell, Babylon! farewell, Rome!' 
but we will say, ' Farewell, dear England ! farewell, 
the Church of God in England, and all the Christian 
friends there.' . . . We go to practise the positive part 
of Church reformation, and to propagate the Gospel 
in America." 

Yet, when once established on this soil, there was 
not much difference in degree of independence be- 
tween the two colonies. Indeed, Endicott, when he 
sent back two turbulent Churchmen to England — or 
when he defaced the cross, then deemed idolatrous, 
upon the English flag — or when he suppressed Mor- 
ton and his roisterers at Merry Mount — went farther 
in the assertion of separate power than the milder 
authorities of Plymouth Colony ever went. Both 
colonies aimed at religious reformation. Neither col- 
ony professed religious toleration, though the Plym- 
outh Colony sometimes practised it. Rhode Isl- 
and, on its establishment by Roger Williams, both 
professed and practised it; and though his banish- 
ment from Massachusetts was not on religious grounds 
alone, but partly from his contentious spirit in other 
ways, yet it resulted in good to the world, at last, 
through his high conceptions of religious liberty. In 
the New Hampshire settlements, which were formed 
as early as 1623, there was less of strictness in religion, 
and perhaps less of religion; nor was there ever any 
great rigidity of df^ctrine or practice m the few scat- 

154 



"AN ENGLISH NATION" 

tered villages of Maine. The two Connecticut colo- 
nies — Connecticut and New Haven — being framed at 
first by the direct emigration of whole religious socie- 
ties, might have been supposed to carry some severity 
with them into their banishment ; but they seemed to 
leave it behind, and were not sterner at the outset 
than the men of the other early settlements, even 
those of Virginia. What changes came over this 
type of manhood in the second generation, in the 
banishment of a colony and the asceticism of a life 
too restricted, we shall see. But these New England 
men were, at the outset, of as high a mould as ever 
settled a state. "God sifted a whole nation," said 
Stoughton, "that He might send choice grain over 
into this wilderness." Between the years 1629 and 
1639 twenty thousand Puritans came to America; it 
was not a mere colonization, it was the transfer of a 
people. 

Thus were four colonies established on the North 
Atlantic coast before the year 1630, in the vast region 
once called Virginia. Three of them were English 
at the beginning — Virginia, New Plymouth, and 
Massachusetts Bay — and the other was destined to 
become such, changing its name from New Nether- 
land to New York. These may be called the pioneer 
colonies; and if we extend our view to the year 1650, 
we take in three other colonies, Connecticut, Rhode 
Island, New Haven — which had gone forth from these 
— while two independent colonies, one English and 
one Swedish, had made separate settlements in Mary- 
land and Delaware ; thus making nine in all, of which 
seven were English. 

The men of the Maryland settlement also called 
themselves, Hke those of Plymouth, " Pilgrims," but 

155 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

the name had not come to them by such arduous ex- 
perience, and it has not attached itself to their de- 
scendants. The Roman CathoHcs and others who 
came to "Mary's Land" in the Ark and the Dove, in 
March, 1634, under Leonard Calvert, named their 
first settlement St. Mary's, in honor of Queen Hen- 
rietta Maria, and they called themselves "the Pil- 
grims of St. Mary's." The emigration was made up 
very differently from those which John Smith re- 
corded in Virginia, for it consisted of but twenty 
"gentlemen" and three hundred laboring men. They 
came under a charter granted to George Calvert, Lord 
Baltimore, who had for some years been trying to 
establish a colony, which he called "Avalon," much 
farther north, and who had grown, in the words of a 
letter of the period, "weary of his intolerable planta- 
tion at Newfoundland, where he hath found between 
eight and nine months' winter, and upon the land 
nothing but rocks, lakes, or morasses like bogs, which 
one might thrust a pike down to the butt-head." 
But he died before the new charter was signed, and 
was succeeded by his son Cecil, the second Lord Balti- 
more, who fully adopted his father's plans and am- 
ply defrayed the cost of the first expedition. 

There exists a graphic account of the voyage of the 
first Maryland settlers by Father White, their chap- 
lain, in his report to his religious superiors at Rome. 
He describes with delight his first ascent of the Poto- 
mac River, of which he says, "The Thames itself is 
a mere rivulet to it"; and when he reaches the St. 
Mary's River, where the colony was founded (March 
27, 1634), he says, "The finger of God is in this, and 
He purposes some great benefit to this nation." He 
might well say that, for the career of the early Marv- 

^56 



"AN ENCxLISH NATION'' 

land colony was peaceful, tolerant, and honorable. 
It was the most nearly independent and self-govern- 
ing of the early colonies, the King asking nothing of 
it but two Indian arrow-heads each year and one- 
fifth of its gold or silver. It was called "the land of 
the sanctuary"; all Christians were tolerated there, 
though it did not, like Rhode Island, expressly ex- 
tend its toleration beyond Christianity. By degrees 
it passed under the control of Puritans from Virginia, 
who proved themselves less liberal to Roman Catho- 
lics than the latter had been to them. But all work- 
ing together laid the foundation of a new community, 
sharing in some respects the pursuits and destinies 
of Virginia, though more peaceful, and at times more 
prosperous. 

The other independent colony came from Sweden — ■ 
the only one ever planted in America by that nation. 
In the first years of Virginia emigration Lord Dela- 
ware, who was then governor, sailed up the river that 
took his name ; but he left no settlement there. The 
Dutch afterwards tried to colonize it, but the Indians 
destroyed the colony. Then the great Protestant 
King of Sweden, Gustavus Adolphus, the " Lion of the 
North," resolved, at the suggestion of a Stockholm 
merchant, William Usselinx, to foimd a colony which, 
unlike Virginia, should have no slaves, and which 
should be "the jewel of his kingdom." He died, and 
his little daughter Christina succeeded him; but the 
prime-minister, Oxenstiern, carried out the original 
plan, sending fifty Swedes and Finlanders, in 1638, 
in two vessels commanded by Peter Minuit, who had 
previously been Governor of New Netherland. In 
spite of the loud protestations of the Dutch governor, 
Kieft, they established themselves on the river Dela- 

157 



H I S T O R \' OF THE i: N 1 T E D vS T A T E S 

ware, and called their fort Christiana, in honor of 
the young queen. Four years after a governor was 
sent out to them from Sweden, a lieutenant-colonel 
in the Swedish army, John Printz, described by one 
writer as a person " who weighed four hundred pounds, 
and drank three drinks at every meal." He built 
himself a house — let us hope on firm foundations — 
upon what is now called Province Island, at the 
mouth of the Schuylkill River. Meanwhile, the Eng- 
lish from New Haven had settled within the bounds 
of the colony, and the Dutch had driven them away 
and then trespassed themselves. Nevertheless, there 
was a Swedish colony thus established in America, 
rivalling the Dutch of New Netherland in enterprise 
and industry, but destined shortly to pass away and 
leave hardly a trace behind. 

Such were the beginnings of European colonization 
along the Atlantic coast of North America. In the 
middle of the seventeenth century (1650) the con- 
dition of that coast was as follows: The New Eng- 
land colonies were, of course, English, and so were 
\'irginia and Maryland ; but the fertile region between 
these northern and southern colonies was claimed and 
occupied, as has been shown, by Holland and by 
Sweden. The French claimed the unsettled regions 
now known as the Carolinas and Georgia; the Span- 
iards held all beyond. Amid all these conflicting 
nationalities, what had become of Ralegh's dream? 
The seven English colonies, arranged in order of time, 
were as follows: Virginia, founded in 1607, and called 
to this day " the Old Dominion" ; Plymouth, founded 
in 1620, and still often called "the Old Colony"; 
Massachusetts Bay, 1628; Connecticut, 1633; Mary- 
land, 1634; Rhode Island and Providence plantations, 

158 



"AN ENGLISH NATION" 

1636; New Haven, 1638. Four of these — -"the two 
Massachusetts and the two Connecticut colonies- 
had been leagued together since 1643 against the 
Indians and the Dutch; the others stood alone, each 
for itself. Among these scattered settlements, where 
was Ralegh's " Enghsh nation"? It existed in these 
germs. 



VII 

THE HUNDRED YEARS' WAR 

EUROPEAN history makes much of .the "Seven 
Years' War" and the "Thirty Years' War"; 
and when we think of a continuous national contest 
for even the least of those periods, there is something 
terrible in the picture. But the feeble English col- 
onies in America, besides all the difficulties of pioneer 
life, had to sustain a warfare that lasted, with few 
intermissions, for about a hundred years. It was, 
moreover, a warfare against the most savage and 
stealthy enemies, gradually trained and reinforced by 
the most formidable military skill of Europe. With- 
out counting the early feuds, such as the Pequot 
War, there elapsed almost precisely a century from 
the accession of King Philip, in 1662, to the Peace of 
Paris, which nominally ended the last French and 
Indian War, in 1763. During this whole period, with 
pacific intervals that sometimes lasted for years, the 
same essential contest went on ; the real question 
being, for the greater part of the time, whether France 
or England should control the continent. The de- 
scription of this prolonged war may, therefore, well 
precede any general account of the colonial or pro- 
vincial life in America. 

The early explorers of the Atlantic coast usually 
testify that they found the Indians a gentle, not a 

160 



THE HUNDRED YEARS' WAR 

ferocious, people. They were as ready as could be 
expected to accept the friendship of the white race. 
In almost every case of quarrel the white men were 
the immediate aggressors, and where they were at- 
tacked without seeming cause — as when Smith's Vir- 
ginian colony was assailed by the Indians in the first 
fortnight of its existence — there is good reason to 
think that the act of the Indians was in revenge for 
wrongs elsewhere. One of the first impulses of the 
early explorers was to kidnap natives for exhibition 
in Europe, in order to excite the curiosity of kings 
or the zeal of priests ; and even where these captives 
were restored unharmed, the distrust could not be 
removed. Add to this the acts of plunder, lust, or 
violence, and there was plenty of provocation given 
from the very oiitset. 

The disposition to cheat and defraud the Indians 
has been much exaggerated, at least as regards the 
English settlers. The early Spanish invaders made 
no pretence of buying one foot of land from the Ind- 
ians, whereas the English often went through the 
form of purchase, and very commonly put in prac- 
tice the reality. The Pilgrims, at the very beginning, 
took baskets of com from an Indian grave to be used 
as seed, and paid for it afterwards. The year after 
the Massachusetts colony was founded the court 
decreed: "It is ordered that Josias Plastowe shall 
(for stealing four baskets of come from the Indians) 
retume them eight baskets againe, be fined five 
pounds, and hereafter called b}'" the name of Josias, 
and not Mr., as formerly he used to be." As a mere 
matter of policy, it was the general disposition of the 
English settlers to obtain lands by honest purchase; 
indeed. Governor Josiah Winslow, of Plymouth, de- 
II i6i 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

clared, in reference to King Philip's War, that "be- 
fore these present troubles broke out the English did 
not possess one foot of land in this colony but what 
was fairly obtained by honest purchase of the Indian 
proprietors." This policy was quite general. Cap- 
tain West, in 1610, bought the site of what is now 
Richmond, Virginia, for some copper. The Dutch 
Governor Minuit bought the island of Manhattan, in 
1626, for sixty gilders. Lord Baltimore's company 
purchased land for cloth, tools, and trinkets; the 
Swedes obtained the site of Christiana for a kettle; 
Roger Williams bought the island of Rhode Island 
for forty fathoms of white beads; and New Haven 
was sold to the whites, in '1638, for "twelve coats of 
English cloth, twelve alchemy spoons, twelve hoes, 
twelve hatchets, twelve porringers, twenty - four 
knives, and twenty-four cases of French knives and 
spoons." Many other such purchases will be found 
recorded by Dr. ElHs. And though the price paid 
might often seem ludicrously small, yet we must 
remember that a knife or a hatchet was really worth 
more to an Indian than many square miles of wild 
land ; while even the beads were a substitute for wam- 
pum, or wompom, which was their circulating me- 
dium in dealing with each other and with the whites, 
and was worth, in 1660, five shillings a fathom. 

So far as the mere bargaining went, the Indians 
were not individually the sufferers in the early days ; 
but we must remember that behind all these trans- 
actions there often lay a theory which was as merci- 
less as that quoted in a previous paper from the 
Spanish " Requisition," and which would, if logically 
carried out, have made all these bargainings quite 
superfluous. Increase ]\Iather begins his history of 

162 



THE HUNDRED YEARS' W A R 

King Philip's War with this phrase, "That the 
Heathen People amongst whom we live, and whose 
Land the Lord God of our Fathers hath given to us 
for a rightful Possession"; and it was this attitude 
of hostile superiority that gave the sting to all the 
relations of the two races. If a quarrel rose, it was 
apt to be the white man's fault; and after it had 
arisen, even the humaner Englishmen usually sided 
with their race, as when the peaceful Plymouth men 
went to war in defence of the Weymouth reprobates. 
This fact, and the vague feeling that an irresistible 
pressure was displacing them, caused most of the 
early Indian outbreaks. And when hostilities had 
once arisen, it was very rare for a white man of Eng- 
lish birth to be found fighting against his own people, 
although it grew more and more common to find Ind- 
ians on both sides. 

As time went on each party learned from the other. 
In the early explorations, as of Champlain and Smith, 
we see the Indians terrified by their first sight of 
fire-arms, but soon becoming skilled in the use of 
them. "The King, with fortie Bowmen to guard 
me," says Captain John Smith, in 1608, "entreated 
me to discharge my Pistoll, which they there pre- 
sented to me, with a mark at sixscore to strike there- 
with; but to spoil the practise I broke the cocke, 
whereat they were much discontented." But writ- 
ing more than twenty years later, in 1631, he says of 
the Virginia settlers, " The loving Salvages their 
kinde friends they trained up so well to shoot in a 
Peace [fowling-piece] to hunt and kill them fowle, 
they became more expert than our own countrymen." 
La Hontan, writing in 1703, says of the successors of 
those against whom Champlain had first used fire- 

163 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

arms, "The Strength of the Iroquese Hes in engag- 
ing with Fire Arms in a Forrest, for they shoot very 
dexterously." They learned also to make more skil- 
ful fortifications, and to keep a regular watch at night, 
which in the time of the early explorers they had 
omitted. The same La Hontan says of the Iroquois, 
"They are as neghgent in the night-time as they are 
vigilant in the day." 

But it is equally true that the English colonists 
learned much in the way of forest warfare from the 
Indians. The French carried their imitation so far 
that they often disguised themselves to resemble 
their allies, with paint, feathers, and all; it was some- 
times impossible to tell in an attacking party which 
warriors were French and which were Indians. With- 
out often going so far as this, the English colonists 
still modified their tactics. At first they seemed al- 
most irresistible because of their armor and weapons. 
In the verv first year of the Plymouth settlement, 
when report was brought that their friend Massasoit 
had been attacked by the Narragansets, and a friend- 
ly Indian had been killed, the colony sent ten armed 
men, including Miles Standish, to the Indian town 
of Namasket (now Middleborough) to rescue or re- 
venge their friend ; and they succeeded in their enter- 
prise, surrounding the chief's house and frightening 
every one in a large Indian village by two discharges 
of their muskets. 

But the heavy armor gradually proved a doubtful 
advantage against a stealthy and light-footed foe. 
In spite of the superior physical strength of the Eng- 
lishman, he could not travel long distances through 
the woods or along the sands without lightening his 
weight. He learned also to fight from behind a tree, 

164 



THE HUNDRED YEARS' WAR 

to follow a trail, to cover his body with hemlock 
boughs for disguise when scouting. Captain Church 
states in his own narrative that he learned from his 
Indian soldiers to march his men "thin and scatter- 
ing" through the woods; that the English had pre- 
viously, according to the Indians, "kept in a heap to- 
gether, so that it was as easy to hit them as to hit 
a house." Even the advantage of fire-arms involved 
the risk of being without ammunition, so that the 
Rhode Island colony, by the code of laws adopted 
in 1647, required that every man between seventeen 
and seventy should have a bow with four arrows, 
and exercise with them ; and that each father should 
furnish every son from seven to seventeen years old 
with a bow, two arrows, and shafts, and should bring 
them up to shooting. If this statute was violated a 
fine was imposed, which the father must pay for the 
son, the master for the servant, deducting it in the 
latter case from his wages. 

Less satisfactory was the change by which the 
taking of scalps came to be a recognized part of 
colonial warfare. Hannah Dustin, who escaped from 
Indian captivity in 1698, took ten scalps with her own 
hand, and was paid for them. Captain Church, un- 
dertaking his expedition against the eastern Indians, 
in 1705, after the Deerfield massacre, announced that 
he had not hitherto permitted the scalping of " Canada 
men," but should thenceforth allow it. In 1722, 
when the Massachusetts colony sent an expedition 
against the village of "praying Indians," founded by 
Father Rasle, they ottered for each scalp a bounty 
of ;^i5, afterwards increased to ;^ioo; and this in- 
humanity was so far carried out that the French 
priest himseK was one of the victims. Jeremiah 

i6s 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

Bumstead, of Boston, made this entry in his almanac 
in the same year: " Aug. 22,28 Indian scalps brought 
to Boston, one of which was Bombazen's [an Indian 
chief] and one fryer Raile's." Two years after, the 
celebrated but inappropriately named Captain Love- 
well, the foremost Indian fighter of his region, came 
upon ten Indians asleep round a pond. He and his 
men killed and scalped them all, and entered Dover, 
New Hampshire, bearing the ten scalps stretched on 
hoops and elevated on poles. After receiving an 
ovation in Dover they went by water to Boston, and 
were paid a thousand pounds for their scalps. Yet 
Lovewell's party was always accompanied by a chap- 
lain, and had prayers every morning and evening. 

The most painful aspect of the whole practice lies 
in the fact that it was not confined to those actually 
engaged in fighting, but that the colonial authorities 
actually established a tariff of prices for scalps, in- 
cluding even non-combatants — so much for a man's, 
so much for a woman's, so much for a child's. Dr. 
Ellis has lately pointed out the striking circumstance 
that whereas William Penn had declared the person 
of an Indian to be "sacred," his grandson, in 1764, 
offered $134 for the scalp of an Indian man, $130 for 
that of a boy under ten, and $50 for that of a woman 
or girl. The habit doubtless began in the fury of 
retaliation, and was continued in order to conciliate 
Indian allies; and when bounties were offered to them, 
the white volunteers naturally claimed a share. But 
there is no doubt that Puritan theology helped the 
adoption of the practice. It was partly because the 
Indian was held to be something worse than a beast 
that he was treated with very little mercy. The 
truth is that he was viewed as a fiend, and there could 

166 



THE HUNDRED YEARS' WAR 

not be much scruple about using inhumanities against 
a demon. Cotton Mather calls Satan "the old land- 
lord" of the American wilderness, and says in his 
Magnalia: "These Parts were then covered with 
Nations of Barbarous Indians and Infidels, in whom 
the Prince of the Power of the Air did work as a 
Spirit; nor could it be expected that Nations of 
Wretches whose whole religion was the most Explicit 
sort of Devil-Worship should not be acted by the 
devil to engage in some early and bloody Action for 
the Extinction of a Plantation so contrary to his In- 
terests as that of New England was." 

Before the French influence began to be felt there 
was very little union on the part of the Indians, and 
each colony adjusted its own relations with them. 
At the time of the frightful Indian massacre in the 
Virginia colony (March 22, 1622), when three hun- 
dred and forty-seven men, women, and children were 
murdered, the Plymouth colony was living in entire 
peace with its savage neighbors. " We have found the 
Indians," wrote Governor Winslow, "very faithful 
to their covenants of peace with us, very loving and 
willing to pleasure us. We go with them in some 
cases fifty miles into the country, and walk as safely 
and peacefully in the woods as in the highways of 
England." The treaty with Massasoit lasted for 
more than fifty years, and the first bloodshed between 
the Plymouth men and the Indians was incurred in 
the protection of the colony of Weymouth, which 
had brought trouble on itself in 1623. The Connecti- 
cut settlements had far more difficulty with the Ind- 
ians than those in Massachusetts, but the severe 
punishment inflicted on the Pequots in 1637 quieted 
the savages for a long time. In that fight a village 

167 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

of seventy wigwams was destroyed by a force of 
ninety white men and several hundred friendly Ind- 
ians; and Captain Underhill, the second in command, 
has left a quaint delineation of the attack. 

There was a period resembling peace in the east- 
ern colonies for nearly forty years after the Pequot 
War, while in Virginia there were renewed massacres 
in 1644 and 1656. But the first organized Indian 
outbreak began with the conspiracy of King Philip 
in 1675, although the seeds had been sown before 
that chief succeeded to power in 1662. In that year 
Wamsutta, or Alexander, Philip's brother — both 
being sons of Massasoit — having fallen under some 
suspicion, was either compelled or persuaded by 
Major Josiah Winslow, afterwards the first native- 
born Governor of Plymouth, to visit that settlement. 
The Indian came with his whole train of warriors and 
women, including his queen, the celebrated "squaw 
sachem" Weetamo, and they stayed at Winslow's 
house. Here the chief fell ill. The day was very 
hot, and though Winslow offered his horse to the 
chief, it was refused, because there was none for his 
squaw or the other women. He was sent home be- 
cause of illness, and died before he got half-way 
home. This is the story as told by Hubbard, but 
not altogether confirmed by other authorities. If 
true, it is interesting as confirming the theory of 
that careful student, Lucien Carr, that the early 
position of women among the Indians was higher than 
has been generally believed. It is pretty certain, at 
any rate, that Alexander's widow, Weetamo, believed 
her husband to have been poisoned by the Enghsh, 
and she ultimately sided with Philip when the war 
broke out, and apparently led him and other Indians 

i68 



THE HUNDRED YEARS' WAR 

to the same view as to the poisoning. It is evident 
that from the time of Philip's accession to authority, 
whatever he may have claimed, his mind was turned 
more and more against the English. 

It is now doubted whether the war known as King 
Philip's War was the result of such deliberate and 
organized action as was formerly supposed, but about 
the formidable strength of the outbreak there can be 
no question. It began in June, 1675; Philip was 
killed August 12, 1676, and the war was prolonged 
at the eastward for nearly two years after his death. 
Ten or twelve Puritan towns were utterly destroyed, 
many more damaged, and five or six hundred men 
were killed or missing. The w^ar (jost the colonists 
^100,000, and the Plymouth colony was left under a 
debt exceeding the whole valuation of its property — 
a debt ultimately paid, both principal and interest. 
On the other hand, the war tested and cemented the 
league founded in 1643 between four colonies — 
Massachusetts, Plymouth, New Haven, and Connect- 
icut — against the Indians and Dutch, while this pre- 
pared the way more and more for the extensive com- 
binations that came after. In this early war, as the 
Indians had no French allies, so the English had few 
Indian allies, and it was less complex than the later 
contests, and so far less formidable. But it was the 
first real experience on the part of the eastern col- 
onists of all the peculiar horrors of Indian warfare — 
the stealthy approach, the abused hospitality, the 
early morning assault, the maimed cattle, tortured 
prisoners, slain infants. All the terrors that lately at- 
tached to a frontier attack of Apaches or Comanches 
belonged to the daily Hfe of settlers in New England 
and Virginia for many years, with one vast difference, 

169 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

arising from the total absence in those early days of 
any personal violence or insult to women. By the 
general agreement of witnesses from all nations, in- 
cluding the women captives themselves, this crown- 
ing crime was then wholly absent. The once famous 
"white woman," Mary Jemison, who was taken pris- 
oner by the Senecas at ten years old, in 1743 — who 
lived in that tribe all her life, survived two Indian 
husbands, and at last died at ninety — always testified 
that she had never received an insult from an Indian, 
and had never known of a captive's receiving any. 
She added that she had known few instances in the 
tribe of conjugal immorality, although she lived to 
see it demoralized and ruined by strong drink. 

The English colonists seem never to have inflicted 
on the Indians any cruelty resulting from sensual 
vices, but of barbarity of another kind there was 
plenty, for it was a cruel age. When the Narragan- 
set fort was taken by the English, December 19, 1675, 
the wigwams within the fort were all set on fire, 
against the earnest entreaty of Captain Church; and 
it was thought that more than one-half the English 
loss — which amounted to several hundred — might 
have been saved had there been any shelter for their 
own wounded on that cold night. This, however, 
was a question of military necessity; but the true 
spirit of the age was seen in the punishments inflicted 
after the war was over. The heads of Philip's chief 
followers were cut oft", though Captain Church, their 
captor, had promised to spare their lives ; and Philip 
himself was beheaded and quartered by Church's or- 
der, since he was regarded, curiously enough, as a 
rebel against Charles the Second, and this was the 
state punishment for treason. Another avowed rea- 

170 



THE II U N D R E DYE A R S ' WAR 

son was, that "as he had caused many an English- 
man's body to lye unburied," not one of his bones 
should be placed under ground. The head was set 
upon a pole in Plymouth, where it remained for more 
than twenty - four years. Yet when we remember 
that the heads of alleged traitors were exposed in 
London at Temple Bar for nearly a century longer — 
till 1772 at least — it is unjust to infer from this course 
any such fiendish cruelty as it would now imply. It 
is necessary to extend the same charity, however 
hard it may be, to the selling of Philip's wife and lit- 
tle son into slavery at the Bermudas; and here, as 
has been seen, the clergy w^ere consulted and the 
Old Testament called into requisition. 

While these events were passing in the eastern 
settlements there were Indian outbreaks in Virginia, 
resulting in war among the white settlers themselves. 
The colony was, for various reasons, discontented; it 
was greatly oppressed, and a series of Indian mur- 
ders brought the troubles to a climax. The policy 
pursued against the Indians was severe, and yet there 
was no proper protection afforded by the government ; 
war was declared against them in 1676, and then the 
forces sent out were suddenly disbanded by the gov- 
ernor, Berkeley. At last there was a popular re- 
bellion, which included almost all the civil and mili- 
tary officers of the colony, and the rebellious party 
put Nathaniel Bacon, Jr., a recently arrived but very 
popular planter, at their head. He marched with five 
hundred men against the Indians, but was proclaimed 
a traitor by the governor, whom Bacon proclaimed a 
traitor in return. The war with the savages became 
by degrees quite secondary to the internal contests 
among the English, in the course of which Bacon took 

171 



HISTORY OF THP: UNITED STATES 

and burned Jamestown, beginning, it is said, with his 
own house ; but he died soon after. The insurrection 
was suppressed, and the Indians were finally quieted 
by a treaty. 

Into all the Indian wars after King Philip's death 
two nationalities besides the Indian and English en- 
tered in an important way. These were the Dutch 
and the French. It was the Dutch who, soon after 
1614, first sold fire-arms to the Indians in defiance of 
their own laws, and by this means greatly increased 
the horrors of the Indian warfare. On the other 
hand, the Dutch, because of the close friendship they 
established with the Five Nations, commonly called 
the Iroquois, did to the English colonists, though 
unintentionally, a service so great that the whole 
issue of the prolonged war may have turned upon it. 
These tribes, the Cayugas, Mohawks, Oneidas, Onon- 
dagas, and Senecas — afterwards joined by the Tus- 
caroras — held the key to the continent. Occupying 
the greater part of what is now the State of New York, 
they virtually ruled the country from the Atlantic to 
the Mississippi and from the Great Lakes to the 
Savannah River. They were from the first treated 
with great consideration by the Dutch, and they re- 
mained, with brief intervals of war, their firm friends. 
One war, indeed, there was under the injudicious 
management of Governor Kieft, lasting from 1640 to 
1643; and this came near involving the EngHsh col- 
onies, while it caused the death of sixteen hundred 
Indians, first or last, seven hundred of these being 
massacred under the borrowed Puritan leader Captain 
Underbill. But this made no permanent interrup- 
tion to the alliance between the Iroquois and the 
Dutch. 



THE HUNDRED YEARS' WAR 

When New Netherland yielded to the Enghsh, 
the same alHance was retained, and to this we prob- 
ably owe the preservation of the colonies, their union 
against England, and the very existence of the pres- 
ent American nation. Yet the first English governor, 
Golden, has left on record the complaint of an Indian 
chief, who said that they very soon felt the difference 
between the two alliances. " When the Dutch held 
this country," he said, "we lay in our houses, but the 
English have always made us lie out-of-doors." 

But if the Dutch were thus an important factor in 
the Indian wars, the French became almost the con- 
trolling influence on the other side. Except for the 
strip of English colonies along the sea-shore, the 
North American continent north of Mexico was 
French. This was not the result of accident or of 
the greater energy of that nation, but of a systematic 
policy, beginning with Champlain and never aban- 
doned by his successors. This plan was, as admi- 
rably stated by Parkman, "to influence Indian coun- 
sels, to hold the balance of power between adverse 
tribes, to envelop in the net-work of French power 
and diplomacy the remotest hordes of the wilderness." 
With this was combined a love of exploration so 
great that it was hard to say which assisted the most 
in spreading their dominion — religion, the love of ad- 
venture, diplomatic skill, or military talent. These 
between them gave the interior of the continent to the 
French. One of the New York governors wrote 
home that if the French were to hold all that they 
had discovered, England would not have a hundred 
miles from the sea anywhere. 

France had early occupied Acadia, Canada, and 
the St. Lawrence on the north. Marquette rediscov- 

^73 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

ered the Mississippi and La Salle traced it, though 
Alvar Nunez had crossed it and De Soto had been 
buried beneath it. A Frenchman first crossed the 
Rocky Mountains; the French settled the Mississippi 
Valley in 1699 and Mobile in 1702. The great west- 
em valleys are still full of French names, and for 
every one left two or three have been blotted out. 
The English maps, down to the year 1763, give the 
name " New France" not to Canada only, but to the 
Ohio and Mississippi valleys. New France was vast ; 
New England was a narrow strip along the shore. 
But there was a yet greater difference in the tenure 
by which the two nations held their nominal settle- 
ments. The French held theirs with the aid of a 
vast system of paid officials, priests, generals, and 
governors ; the English colonists kept theirs for them- 
selves, aided by a little chartered authority or de- 
puted power. Moreover, the French retained theirs 
by a chain of forts and a net-work of trading posts; 
the English held theirs by sober agriculture. In the 
end the spade and axe proved mightier than the 
sword. What postponed the triumph was that the 
French, not the English, had won the hearts of the 
Indians. 

This subject has been considered in a previous 
chapter, and need be only briefly mentioned here; 
but it should not be wholly passed by. To the Ind- 
ian, the Frenchman was a daring swordsman, a gay 
cavalier, a dashing leader, and the most charming of 
companions ; the Englishman was a plodding and sor- 
did agriculturist. "The stoic of the woods" saw 
men infinitely his superiors in all knowledge and in 
the refinements of life, who yet cheerfully accepted 
his way of living, and took with apparent relish to 

174 




LA SALLE CHRISTEMXG THE COUNTRV " LOUISI AX A ' 



THE HUNDRED YEARS' WAR 

his whole way of existence. Charlev^oix sums it all 
up admirably: "The savages did not become French: 
the Frenchmen became savages." To the savage, at 
least, the alliance was inestimable. What saved the 
English colonies was the fact that it was not quite 
universal. It failed to reach the most advanced, the 
most powerful, and the most central race of savages 
— the tribes called Iroquois. It took the French a 
great many years to outgrow the attitude of hostility 
to these tribes which began with the attack of Cham- 
plain and a few Frenchmen on an Iroquois fort. Baron 
La Hontan, one of the few Frenchmen who were not 
also good Catholics, attributes this mainly to the in- 
fluence of the priests. He says, in the preface to the 
English translation of his letters (1703): "Notwith- 
standing the veneration I have for the clergy, I im- 
])ute to them all the mischief the Iroquese have done 
to the French colonics in the course of a war that 
would never have been undertaken if it had not been 
for the counsels of those pious churchmen." But 
whatever the cause, the fact was of vital importance, 
and proved to be, as has been already said, the turn- 
ing-point of the whole controversy. 

These being the general features of the French and 
Indian warfare, it remains only to consider briefly 
its successive stages. It took the form of a series of 
outbreaks, most of which were so far connected with 
public affairs in Europe that their very names often 
record the successive rulers under whose nominal 
authority they were waged. The first, known as 
"King William's War," and sometimes as "St. Cas- 
tin's War," began in 1688, ten years after the close 
of King Philip's War, while France and England were 
still at peace. In April of the next year came the 

175 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

news that William of Orange had landed in England, 
and this change in the English dynasty was an im- 
portant argument in the hands of the French, who 
insisted on regarding the colonists not as loyal English- 
men, but as rebels against their lawful king, James 
the Second. In reality the American collision had 
been in preparation for years. "About the year 
1685," wrote the English official, Edward Randolph, 
"the French of Canada encroached upon the lands of 
the subjects of the crown of England, building forts 
upon the heads of their great rivers, and, extending 
their bounds, disturbed the inhabitants." On the 
other hand, it must be remembered that England 
claimed the present territory of New Brunswick and 
Nova Scotia, and the provincial charter of Massa- 
chusetts covered those regions. Thus each nation- 
ality seemed to the other to be trying to encroach, 
and each professed to be acting on the defensive. 
With this purpose the French directly encouraged 
Indian outbreaks. We now know, from the de- 
spatches of Denonville, the French governor of 
Canada, that he claimed as his own merit the suc- 
cesses of the Indians; and Champigny wrote that he 
himself had supplied them with gunpowder, and that 
the Indians of the Christian villages near Quebec 
had taken the leading part. 

Unluckily several of the provinces had just been 
brought together under the governorship of a man 
greatly disliked and distrusted. Sir Edmund Andros. 
In August this official, then newly placed in power, 
visited the Five Nations at Albany to secure their 
friendliness. During his absence there were rumors 
of Indian outbreaks at the East, and though he took 
steps to suppress them, yet nobody trusted him. The 

176 



THE H U X D R 1^: D Y E A R S ' A\' A R 

friendly Indians declared that "the Governor was a 
rogue, and had hired the Indians to kill the English," 
and that the Mohawks were to seize Boston in the 
spring. This rumor helped the revolt of the people 
against Andros; and after his overthrow the garrisons 
at the eastward were broken up and the savage 
assaults recommenced. Cocheco, now Dover, New 
Hampshire, was destroyed; Pemaquid, a fort with 
seven or eight cannon, was regularly besieged by a 
hundred Christian Indians under their priest, Pere 
Thury, who urged on the attack, but would not let 
the English be scalped or tortured. From the begin- 
ning the movements of the French and Indians were 
not impulsive outbreaks, as heretofore, but were di- 
rected by a trained soldier of fifty years' experience, 
the Count de Frontenac. There were no soldiers of 
experience among the colonists, and they fought like 
peasants against a regular army. Yet when, after 
a terrible Indian massacre at Schenectady, a congress 
of delegates was held at New York, in May, 1690, 
they daringly planned an attack on the two strong- 
holds, Quebec and Montreal. Winthrop, of Connect- 
icut, was to take Montreal by a land expedition, and 
Sir William Phips, of Massachusetts — a rough sailor 
who had captured Port Royal — was sent by water 
with more than two thousand men against Quebec, 
an almost impregnable fortress manned by nearly 
three thousand. Both enterprises failed, and the 
Baron La Hontan wrote of Phips — in the English 
edition of his letters — that he could not have served 
the French better had he stood still with his hands in 
his pockets. The colonies were impoverished by 
these hopeless efforts, and the Puritans attributed 
their failure to "the frown of God." The Indians 

177 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

made fresh attacks at Pentucket (Haverhill) and else- 
where; but the Peace of Ryswick (September 20, 
1697) stopped the war for a time and provided that 
the American boundaries of France and England 
should remain the same. 

A few more years brought new hostilities (May 4, 
1702), when England declared war against France 
and vSpain. This was called in Europe "The. War of 
the Spanish Succession," but in America simply 
"Queen Anne's War." The Five Nations were now 
strictly neutral, so that New York was spared, and 
the force of the war fell on the New England settle- 
ments. The eastern Indians promised equal neu- 
trality, and one of their chiefs said, "The sun is not 
more distant from the earth than our thoughts from 
war." But they joined in the war just the same, 
and the Deerfield (Massachusetts) massacre, with the 
captivity of Rev. John Williams, roused the terror of 
all the colonists. Traces of that attack, in the form 
of tomahawk strokes upon doors, are still to be seen 
in Deerfield. The Governor of Massachusetts was 
distrusted; he tried in vain to take the small fort of 
Port Royal in Nova Scotia — "the hornets' nest," as 
it was called ; but it w^as finally taken in 1 710, and its 
name was changed to Annapolis Royal, afterwards 
Annapolis, in honor of the Queen. 

The year after a great expedition was sent from 
England by St. John, afterwards Lord Bolingbroke, 
to effect the conquest of Canada.- Fifteen ships of 
war, with five regiments of Marlborough's veterans, 
reached Boston in June, 171 1. Provincial troops 
went from New York and New Jersey, as well as 
New England, and there were eight hundred Iroquois 
warriors. St. John wrote, " I believe you may depend 

178 



THE HUNDRED YEARS' WAR 

upon our being, at this time, the masters of all North 
America." On the contrary, they did not become 
masters of an inch of ground; the expedition utterly 
failed, mainly through the incompetency of the com- 
mander. Admiral Sir Hovenden Walker; eight ships 
were wrecked, eight hundred and eighty-four men 
were drowned, and fleet and land forces retreated. 
In April, 1 7 13, the war nominally closed with the 
Peace of Utrecht, which gave to England Hudson 
Bay, Newfoundland, and xVcadia — the last so poorly 
defined as to lead to much trouble at a later day. 

But in Maine the Indian disturbances still went on. 
New forts were built by the colonists, and there were 
new attacks by the Abenaki tribe. Among these the 
most conspicuous figure was for a quarter of a cen- 
tury the Jesuit priest Pere Rasle, who had collected 
a village of "praying Indians" at Norridgewock, and 
had trained a band of forty young men to assist, 
wearing cassock and surplice, in the services of the 
Church. There is in the Harvard College Library a 
MS. glossary of the Abenaki language in his hand- 
writing. His whole career was one of picturesque 
self-devotion; but he belonged emphatically to the 
Church militant, and was in constant communication 
with the French Governor of Canada. His settle- 
ment was the headquarters for all attacks upon the 
English colonists, and was finally broken up and an- 
nihilated by them on August 23, 1724. With him 
disappeared the Jesuit missions in New England, 
though there were scattering hostilities some time 
longer. On December 15, 1725, the Abenaki chiefs 
signed at Boston a treaty of peace, which is still pre- 
served in the Massachusetts archives, and this com- 
pact was long maintained. 

179 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

Nineteen years of comparative peace now followed 
— by far the longest interval during the contest of a 
century. In 1744 came another war between Eng- 
land and France, known in Europe as "The War of 
the Austrian Succession," but in America as "King 
George's War," or as "Governor Shirley's War." Its 
chief event was one which was the great military sur- 
prise of that period, both at home and abroad — 
the capture of Louisburg in 1745. Hawthorne, in 
one of his early papers, has given a most graphic 
picture of the whole occurrence. A fleet sailed from 
Boston under Sir William Pepperrell, who led three 
thousand men to attack a stronghold which had been 
called the Gibraltar of America, and whose fortifica- 
tions had cost five million dollars. The walls were 
twenty or thirty feet high and forty feet thick ; they 
were surrounded by a ditch eighty feet wide and de- 
fended by two hundred and forty-three pieces of 
artillery, against which the assailants had eighteen 
cannon and three mortars. It seemed an enterprise 
as hopeless as that of Sir William Phips against Que- 
bec, and yet it succeeded. To the amazement of all, 
the fortress surrendered after a siege of six weeks. 
The pious Puritans believed it a judgment of God 
upon the Roman Catholics, and held with delight a 
Protestant service in the chapel of the fort. But 
three years after (1748) the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle 
provided for the mutual restoration of all conquests, 
and Louisburg was given back to the French. 

Every step in this prolonged war taught the col- 
onists the need of uniting. All the New England 
colonies had been represented at Louisburg by men, 
and New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania by 
money. New hostilities taking place in Nova Scotia 

1 80 




NOKTIl AMKRICA, IToO 
Showing Claims Arising out of Exploration 



THE H U N i) R K I) V \l A R S ' W A R 

and along the Ohio, what is called the "Old French 
War," or "French and Indian War," began, and at 
its very outset a convention of delegates met in 
Albany, coming from New England, New York, Penn- 
sylvania, and Maryland. It was called by advice of 
the British ministry, and a committee of one from 
each colony was a])pointed to consider a plan of 
union. No successful plan followed, and a sarcastic 
Mohawk chief said to the colonists: "You desired us 
to open our minds and hearts to you. Look at the 
French ; they are men ; they are fortifying everywhere. 
But, we are ashamed to say it, you are Hke women, 
without any fortifications. It is but one step from 
Canada hither, and the French may easily come and 
turn you out-of-doors." 

For the eight years following it seemed more than 
likely that the description would be fulfilled. The 
French kept resolutely at work, building forts and 
establishing garrisons, until they had a chain of some 
sixty that reached from Quebec to New Orleans. 
Vainly did the Governor of Virginia send Washington, 
then a youth of twenty-one, to remonstrate with the 
French officers in 1753; he traversed the unbroken 
forests ancl crossed freezing rivers on rafts of ice; 
but to no result, except that it all contributed to the 
training of the future general. The English colonists 
achieved some easy successes — as in dispersing and 
removing the so-called "French neutrals" in Acadia 
— a people whose neutrality, though guaranteed by 
treaty, did not prevent them from constantly recruit- 
ing the enemy's forces, and who were as inconvenient 
for neighbors as they are now picturesque in history. 
But when Braddock came with an army of English vet- 
erans to lead the colonial force he was ignominiously 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

defeated, near what is now Pittsburg, Pennsylvania 
(July 9, 1755), and Washington and the provincial 
troops had to cover his retreat. All along the line of 
the colonies the Indian attacks only grew more terrible, 
the French telling the natives that the time had now 
come to drive the English from the soil. In Virginia, 
Washington wrote that the "supplicating tears of 
women and the moving petitions of the men melted 
him with deadly sorrow." Farther north, the French 
General Montcalm took fort after fort with apparent 
ease, some of the garrisons, as at Fort William Henr}^ 
being murdered by his Indians. "For God's sake," 
wrote the officer in command at Albany to the Gov- 
ernor of Massachusetts, " exert yourself to save a prov- 
ince! New York itself may fall. Save a country! 
Prevent the downfall of the British government!" 
Dr. Jeremy Belknap, whom Bryant declares to have 
been the first person who made American history 
attractive, thus summed up the gloomy situation in 
the spring of 1757: "The great expense, the frequent 
disappointments, the loss of men, of forts, of stores, 
was very discouraging. The enemy's country was 
filled with prisoners and scalps, private plunder and 
public stores, and provisions which our people, as 
beasts of burden, had conveyed to them. These re- 
flections were the dismal accompaniment of the 
winter." 

What turned the scale was the energy of the new 
secretary of state, William Pitt. Under his inspira- 
tion the colonies raised men " like magic," we are told ; 
the home government furnishing arms, equipments, 
and supplies, the colonies organizing, uniforming, and 
paying the troops, with a promise of reimbursement. 
Events followed in quick succession. Abercrombie 

182 



THE HUNDRED Y E A R S ' W A R 

failed at Ticonderoga, but Bradstreet took Fort 
Frontenac ; Prideaux took Niagara ; Louisburg, Crown 
Point, and even Ticonderoga itself fell. Quebec was 
taken in 1759, Wolfe, the victor, and Montcalm, the 
defeated, dying alike almost in the hour when the 
battle was decided. Montreal soon followed ; and in 
1763 the Peace of Paris surrendered Canada to the 
English, with nearly all the French possessions east 
of the ^Mississippi. France had already given up to 
Spain all her claims west of the Mississippi, and her 
brilliant career as an American power was over. With 
her the Indian tribes were also quelled, except that 
the brief conspiracy of Pontiac came and went like 
the last flicker of an expiring candle; then the flame 
vanished, and the Hundred Years' W^ar was at an end. 



VIII 

THE SECOND GENERATION OF ENG- 
LISHMEN IN AMERICA 

WHEN a modem American makes a pilgrimage, 
as I have done, to the English village church at 
whose altars his ancestors once ministered, he brings 
away a feeling of renewed wonder at the depth of 
conviction which led the Puritan clergy to forsake 
their early homes. The exquisitely peaceful features 
of the English rural landscape — the old Norman 
church, half ruined, and in this particular case re- 
stored by aid of the American descendants of that 
high-minded emigrant; the old burial-ground that 
surrounds it, a haunt of such peace as to make death 
seem doubly restful; the ancestral oaks; the rooks 
that soar above them; the flocks of sheep drif ting- 
noiselessly among the ancient gravestones — all speak 
of such tranquillity as the eager American must cross 
the Atlantic to obtain. No Englishman feels these 
things as the American feels them; the antiquity, as 
Hawthorne says, is our novelty. But beyond all the 
charm of the associations this thought always recurs 
— what love of their convictions, what devotion to 
their own faith, must have been needed to drive the 
educated Puritan clergymen from such delicious re- 
treats to encounter the ocean, the forest, and the 
Indians! 

1S4 



ENGLISHMEN IN AMERICA 

Yet there was in the early emigration to every 
American colony quite another admixture than that 
of learning and refinement; a sturdy yeoman element, 
led by the desire to better its condition and create a 
new religious world around it; and an adventurous 
element, wishing for new excitements. The popular 
opinion of that period did not leave these considera- 
tions out of sight, as may be seen by this London 
street ballad of 1640, describing the emigration: 

"Our company we feare not, there goes my Cosen Hanna, 

And Ruben doe perswade to goe his sister faire Susanna, 

W"" Abigail and Lidia, and Ruth noe doubt comes after, 

And Sara kinde will not stay bchinde my Cosen Constance 

dafter — 

Then for the truth's sake goe. 

" Nay Tom Tyler is p'pared, and ye Smith as black as a cole. 
And Ralph Cobbler too w'*" us will goe for he regards his 

soale, 
And the weaver honest Lyman, w"" Prudence Jacobs 

daughter, 
And Agatha and Barrbarra professeth to come after — 
Then for the truth's sake goe." 

There were also traces, in the emigration, of that 
love of wandering, of athletic sports and woodcraft, 
that still sends young men of English race to the far 
comers of the earth. In the Virginia colonization 
this element was large, but it also entered into the. 
composition of the northern colonies. The sister 
of Governor Winthrop wrote from England, in 1637, 
of her son, afterwards Sir George Downing, that the 
boy was anxious to go to New England; and she 
spoke of the hazard that he was in "by reson of both 
his father's and his owne strange inclination to the 

185 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

plantation sports." Uphani accordingly describes 
this same youth in Harvard College, where he grad- 
uated in 1642, as shooting birds in the wild woods 
of Salem and setting duck-decoys in the ponds. Life 
in the earlier days of the emigration was essentially a 
border life, a forest life, a frontier life — differing from 
such life in Australia or Colorado mainly in one wild 
dream which certainly added to its romance — the 
dream that Satan still ruled the forest, and that the 
Indians were his agents. 

Whatever else may be said of the Puritan emigra- 
tion, it represented socially and intellectually much 
of what was best in the mother-country. Men whose 
life in England would have been that of the higher 
class of gentry might have been seen in New England 
taking with their own hands from the barrel their last 
measure of corn, and perhaps interrupted by the 
sight of a vessel arriving in the harbor with supplies. 
These men, who ploughed their own fields and shot 
their own venison, were men who had paced the halls 
of Emanuel College at Cambridge, who quoted Seneca 
in their journals of travel, and who brought with 
them books of classic literature among their works 
of theology. The library bequeathed by the Rev. 
John Harvard to the infant college at Cambridge in- 
cluded Homer, Pliny, Sallust, Terence, Juvenal, and 
Horace. The library bought by the commissioners 
from the Rev. Mr. Welde, for the Rev. Mr. Eliot, had 
in it Plutarch's Morals and the plays of Aristophanes. 
In its early poverty the colony voted £400 to found 
Harvard College, and that institution had for its 
second president a man so learned, after the fashion 
of those days, that he had the Hebrew Bible read to 
the students in the morning and the Greek Testa- 

1S6 



ENGLISHMEN IN AMERICA 

ment in the afternoon, commenting on both extem- 
poraneously in Latin. The curriculum of the insti- 
tution was undoubtedly devised rather with a view 
to making learned theologians than elegant men of 
letters — thus much may be conceded to Matthew 
Arnold; but this was quite as much the case, as Mr. 
Mullinger has shown, in the English Cambridge of 
the seventeenth century. 

The year 1650 may be roughly taken as closing 
the first generation of the American colonists. Vir- 
ginia had then been settled forty-three years. New 
York thirty-six, Plymouth thirty, Massachusetts Bay 
twenty-two, Maryland nineteen, Connecticut seven- 
teen, Rhode Island fourteen, New Haven twelve, and 
Delaware twelve. A variety of industries had ali^eady 
been introduced, especially in the New England colo- 
nies. Boat-building had there begun, according to 
Carroll D. Wright, in 1624; brick - making, tan- 
ning, and windmills were introduced in 1629; shoe- 
making and saw-mills in 1635; cloth-mills in 1638; 
printing the year after; and iron foundries in 1644. 
In Virginia the colony had come near to extinction 
in 1624, and had revived under wholly new leader- 
ship. In New England, Brewster, Winthrop, Hig- 
ginson, Skelton, Shepard, and Hooker had all died ; 
Bradford, Endicott, Standish, Winslow, Eliot, and 
Roger Williams were still living, but past their prime. 
Church and State were already beginning to be pos- 
sessed by a younger race, who had either been born 
in America or been brought as young children to its 
shores. In this coming race, also, the traditions of 
learning prevailed; the reading of Cotton Mather, 
for instance, was as marvellous as his powers of 
memory. When he entered Harvard College, at 

187 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

eleven, he had read Cicero, Terence, Ovid, Virgil, 
and the Greek Testament; wrote Latin with ease; 
was reading Homer, and had begun the Hebrew 
grammar. But the influences around these men were 
stern and even gloomy, though tempered by scholar- 
ship, by the sweet charities of home, and by some 
semblance of relaxation. We can hardly say that 
there was nothing but sternness when we find the 
Rev. Peter Thacher at Barnstable, Massachusetts — 
a man of high standing in the churches — mitigating 
the care of souls, in 1679, by the erection of a private 
nine-pin alley on his own premises. Still there was 
for a time a distinct deepening of shadow around the 
lives of the Puritans, whether in the northern or 
southern colonies, after they were left wholly to 
themselves upon the soil of the New World. The 
persecutions and the delusions belong generally to 
this later epoch. In the earlier colonial period there 
would have been no time for them, and hardly any 
inclination. In the later or provincial period society 
was undergoing a change, and wealth and aristo- 
cratic ways of living were being introduced. But 
it was in the intermediate time that religious rigor 
had its height. 

Modern men habitually exaggerate the difference 
between themselves and the Puritans. The points 
of difference are so great and so picturesque, we for- 
get that the points of resemblance, after all, outweigh 
them. We seem more remote from them than is 
really the case, because we dwell too much on second- 
ary matters — a garment, a phrase, a form of service. 
Theologian and historian are alike overcome by this; 
as soon as they touch the Puritans all is sombre, 
there is no sunshine, no bird sings. Yet the birds 

188 



E X (} L 1 S 11 M i: N IN A M E R I C A 

filled the woods with their music then as now; chil- 
dren played ; mothers talked pretty nonsense to their 
babies; Governor Winthrop wrote tender messages 
to his third wife in a way that could only have come 
of long and reiterated practice. We cannot associate 
a gloomy temperament with Miles Standish's doughty 
defiances, or with Francis Higginson's assertion that 
"a draught of New England air is better than a flagon 
of Old English ale." Their lives, like all lives, were 
tempered and moulded by much that was quite apart 
from theology — hard work in the woods, fights with 
the Indians, and less perilous field sports. They were 
unlike modem men when they were at church, but 
not so unlike when they went on a bear-hunt. 

In order to understand the course of Puritan life 
in America, we must bear in mind that the first- 
comers in the most strictly Puritan colonies were 
more and not less liberal than their immediate de- 
scendants. The Plymouth colony was more tolerant 
than the later colony of Massachusetts Bay, and the 
first church of the Massachusetts Bay colony was 
freer than those which followed it. The covenant 
drawn up for this Salem church in 1629 has seldom 
been surpassed in benignant comprehensiveness; it 
is thought that the following words constituted the 
whole of it: ''We covenant with the Lord and one 
with another, and do bind ourselves, in the presence 
of God, to walk together in all His ways, according 
as He is pleased to reveal Himself to us in His blessed 
word of truth." This was drawn up, according to 
Mather, by the first minister of Salem; and even 
when this covenant was enlarged into a confession of 
faith by his son and successor, some years later, it 
nevertheless remained more liberal than many later 

189 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

covenants. The trouble was that the horizon for a 
time narrowed instead of widened. The isolation 
and privations of the colonial life produced their in- 
evitable effect, and this tendency grew as the new 
generation developed. 

But it must be noticed that even this early liberal- 
ity never went so far as to lay down any high-sound- 
ing general principles of religious liberty, or to an- 
nounce that as the comer-stone of the new enterprise. 
Here it is that great and constant injustice is done 
— in attributing to these Puritans a principle of tol- 
eration which they never set up, and then reproach- 
ing them with being false to it. Even Francis Park- 
man, who seems to me to be, within his own domain, 
unquestionably the first of American historians, loses 
his habit of justice when he quits his Frenchmen and 
his Indians and deals with the Puritans. "At the 
outset," he says, in his Pioneers of France," New Eng- 
land was unfaithful to the principles of her existence. 
Seldom has religious toleration assumed a form more 
oppressive than among the Puritan exiles. New 
England Protestantism appealed to liberty; then 
closed the door against her. On a stock of freedom 
she grafted a scion of despotism." Surely this is the 
old misstatement often made, often refuted. When 
were those colonists unfaithful to their own principle ? 
When did they appeal to liberty ? They appealed to 
truth. It would have been far better and nobler 
had they aimed at both, but in this imperfect world 
we have often to praise and venerate men for a single 
virtue. Anything but the largest toleration would 
have been inconsistency in Roger Williams, or per- 
haps—for this is less clearly established— in Lord 
Baltimore; but in order to show that the Puritans 

190 



ENGLISHMEN IN A M E R I C A 

were false to religious liberty, it must be shown that 
they had proclaimed it. On the contrary, what they 
sought to proclaim was religious truth. They lost 
the expansive influence of freedom, but they gained 
the propelling force of a high though gloomy faith. 
They lost the variety that exists in a liberal com- 
munity where each man has his own opinion, but 
they gained the concentrated power of a homogeneous 
and well-ordered people. 

There are but two of the early colonies of which 
the claim can be seriously made that they were found- 
ed on any principle of religious freedom. These two 
are Rhode Island and Maryland. It was said of the 
first by Roger Williams, its spiritual founder, that "a 
permission of the most paganish, Jewish, Turkish, or 
anti - Christian conscience" should be there granted 
" to all men of all nations and countries." Accordingly, 
the colony afforded such shelter on a very wide scale. 
It received Anne Hutchinson after she had set the 
State as w^ell as Church in a turmoil at Boston, and had 
made popular elections turn on her opinions. It not 
only sheltered but gave birth to Jemima Wilkinson, 
prophetess of the "Cumberland Zealots," who might, 
under the stimulus of a less tolerant community, 
have expanded into a Joanna Southcote or a Mother 
Ann Lee. It protected Samuel Gorton, a man of the 
Savonarola temperament, of whom his last surv^iving 
disciple said, in 1771, "My master wrote in heaven, 
and none can understand his writings but those who 
live in heaven while on earth." It cost such an effort 
to assimilate these exciting ingredients that Roger 
Williams described Gorton, in 1640, as "bewitching 
and bemadding poor Providence," and the grand 
jury of Portsmouth, Rhode Island, was compelled to 

191 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

indict him as a nuisance in the same year, on this 
count, among others, "that Samuel Gorton contume- 
liously reproached the magistrates, calling them Just- 
asses." Nevertheless, all these, and such as these, 
were at last disarmed and made harmless by the wise 
policy of Rhode Island, guided by Roger Williams, 
after he had outgrown the superfluous antagonisms 
of his youth, and had learned to be conciliatory in 
action as well as comprehensive in doctrine. Yet 
even he had so much to undergo in keeping the peace 
with all these heterogeneous materials that he re- 
coiled at last from "such an infinite liberty of con- 
science," and declared that in the case of Quakers 
"a due and moderate restraint and punishment of 
these incivilities" was not only no persecution, but 
was " a duty and command of God." 

Maryland has shared with Rhode Island the honor 
of having established religious freedom, and this claim 
is largely based upon the noble decree passed by its 
General Assembly in 1649: 

"No person whatsoever in this province jDrofessing to be- 
lieve in Jesus Christ shall from henceforth be any way 
troubled or molested for his or her religion, or in the free 
exercise thereof, or any way compelled to the belief or exer- 
cise of any other religion against his or her consent." 

But it is never hard to evade a statute that seems 
to secure religious liberty, and this decree did not 
prevent the Maryland colony from afterwards enact- 
ing that if any person should deny the Holy Trinity 
he should first be bored through the tongue and fined 
or imprisoned ; that for the second offence he should 
be branded as a blasphemer, the letter "B" being 
stamped on his forehead; and for the third offence 

192 



ENGLISHMEN IN AMERICA 

should die. This was certainly a very limited tolera- 
tion; and granting that it has a partial value, it re- 
mains an interesting question who secured it. Car- 
dinal Manning and others have claimed this measure 
of toleration as due to the Roman Catholics, but Mr. 
E. D. Neill has conclusively shown that the Roman 
Catholic element was originally much smaller than 
was supposed, that the "two hundred Catholic gen- 
tlemen" usually claimed as founding the colony were 
really some twenty gentlemen and three hundred la- 
boring men; that of the latter twelve died on ship- 
board, of whom only two confessed to the priests, 
thus giving a clew to the probable opinions of the 
rest ; and that of the Assembly which passed the reso- 
lutions the majority were probably Protestants, and 
even Puritans. But granting to Maryland a place 
next to Rhode Island in religious freedom, she paid, 
like that other colony, what was then the penalty of 
freedom ; and I must dwell a moment on this. 

In those days religious liberty brought a hetero- 
geneous and often reckless population ; it usually in- 
volved the absence of a highly educated ministry; 
and this implied the want of a settled system of edu- 
cation and of an elevated standard of public duty. 
These deficiencies left both in Rhode Island and in 
Maryland certain results which are apparent to this 
day. There is nothing more extraordinary in the 
Massachusetts and Connecticut colonies than the 
promptness with which they entered on the work of 
popular instruction. These little communities, just 
struggling for existence, marked out an educational 
system which had then hardly a parallel in the 
European world. In the Massachusetts Bay colony, 
Salem had a free school in 1640, Boston in 1642, or 
13 193 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

earlier, Cambridge about the same time ; and the 
State, in 1647, marked out an elaborate system of 
common and grammar schools for every township — 
a system then without a precedent, so far as I 
know, in Europe. Thus ran the essential sentences 
of this noble document, held up to the admira- 
tion of all England by Lord Macaulay in Parlia- 
ment : 

. . . "Y' learning may not be buried in y*" grave of o' 
fath'^ in y* church and comon wealth, the Lord assisting 
o' endeavors — It is therefore ord'ed, y' ev'y township in 
this iurisdiction, aft' y^ Lord heth increased y"' to y^ num- 
ber of 50 household", shall then forthw'^ appoint one w'*'in 
their towne to teach all such children as shall resort to him 
to write and reade; . . . and it is furth' ordered, y' where any 
towne shall increase to y^ numb' of 100 families or house- 
hould% they shall set up a gramer schoole, y* m' thereof 
being able to instruct youth so farr as they may be fitted 
for y" university." 

The printing-press came with these schools, or be- 
fore them, and was actively employed, and it is im- 
possible not to recognize the contrast between such 
institutions and the spirit of that Governor of Vir- 
ginia (Berkeley) who said, a quarter of a century 
later, "We have no free schools nor printing, and I 
hope shall not have these hundred years." In Mary- 
land, convicts and indented servants were sometimes 
advertised for sale as teachers at an early day, and 
there was no public system until 1728. In Rhode 
Island, Newport had a public school in 1640, but it 
apparently lasted but a year or two, nor was there 
a general system till the year 1800. These contrasts 
are mentioned for one sole purpose: to show that no 
single community unites all virtues, and that it was 

194 



E N G L I S II M r: N I X A M ERICA 

at that period very hard for religious liberality and 
a good school system to exist together. 

There was a similar irregularity among the colonies 
in the number of university-trained men. Professor 
F. B. Dexter has shown that no less than sixty such 
men joined the Massachusetts Bay colony within ten 
years of its origin, while after seventeen years of 
separate existence the Virginia colony held but two 
university men, Rev. Hant Wyatt and Dr. Pott ; and 
Rhode Island had also but two in its early days, 
Roger Williams and the recluse William Blaxton. No 
one has more fully recognized the " heavy price paid" 
for this "great cup of liberty" in Rhode Island than 
her able scholar, Professor Diman, who employed 
precisely these phrases to describe it in his Bristol 
address; and who fearlessly pointed out how much 
that State lost, even while she gained something, by 
the absence of that rigorous sway and that lofty pub- 
lic standard which were associated with the. stem 
rule of the Puritan clergy. 

In all the early colonies, unless we except Rhode 
Island, the Puritan spirit made itself distinctly felt, 
and religious persecution widely prevailed. Even in 
Maryland, as has been shown, the laws imposed 
branding and boring through the tongue as a penalty 
for certain opinions. In Virginia those who refused 
to attend the Established Church must pay 200 
pounds of tobacco for the first olTence, 500 for the 
second, and incur banishment for the third. A fine 
of 5000 pounds of tobacco was placed upon unau- 
thorized religious meetings. Quakers and Baptists 
were w^hipped or pilloried, and any ship-master con- 
veying Nonconformists was fined. Even so late as 
1 741, after persecution had virtually ceased in New 

195 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

England, severe laws were passed against Presbyte- 
rians in Virginia ; and the above-named laws of Mary- 
land were re-enacted in 1723. At an earlier period, 
however, the New England laws, if not severer, were 
no doubt more rigorously executed. In some cases, 
to be sure, the so-called laws were a deliberate 
fabrication, as in the case of certain Connecticut 
"Blue Laws," a code reprinted to this day in 
the newspapers, but which existed only in the 
active and malicious imagination of the Tory Dr. 
Peters. 

The spirit of persecution was strongest in the New 
England colonies, and chiefly in Massachusetts, be- 
cause of the greater intensity with which men there 
followed out their convictions. It was less manifest 
in the banishment of Roger Williams — which was, 
after all, not so much a religious as a political trans- 
action — than in the Quaker persecutions which took 
place between 1656 and 1660. Whatever minor ele- 
ments may have entered into the matter, these were 
undoubtedly persecutions based on religious grounds, 
and are therefore to be utterly condemned. Yet 
they were not quite so bad as a class of persecutions 
which had become familiar in Europe — forbidding 
heretics to leave the realm, and then tormenting 
them if they stayed. Not a Quaker ever suffered 
death except for voluntary action — that is, for choos- 
ing to stay or to return after banishment. To de- 
mand that men should consent to be banished on 
pain of death seems to us an outrage ; but it seemed 
quite otherwise, we must remember, to those who 
had already exiled themselves, in order to secure a 
spot where they could worship in their own way. 
Cotton Mather says, with some force : 

196 



ENGLISHMEN IN AMERICA 

"It was also thought that the very Quakers themselves 
would say that if they had got into a Corner of the World, 
and with an immense Toyl and Charge made a Wilderness 
habitable, on purpose there to be undisturbed in the Exer- 
cises of their Worship, they would never bear to have New- 
Englanders come among them and interrupt their Publick 
Worship, endeavor to seduce their Children from it, yea, 
and repeat such Endeavors after mild Entreaties first, and 
then just Banishments, to oblige their departure." 



We now see that this place they occupied was not 
a mere corner of the world, and that it was even then 
an essential part of the British dominions and sub- 
ject to British laws. We can therefore see that this 
was not the whole of the argument, and the Quakers 
might well maintain that they had a legal right to 
exercise their religion in America. The colonists 
seem to me to have strained much too far the power 
given them in their patent to "encounter, expulse, 
repel, and resist" all invaders when they applied it 
to these unwarlike visitors. Yet the Quakers were 
in a sense invaders, nevertheless ; their able defender, 
R. C. Hallowell, concedes as much when he entitles 
his history The Quaker Invasion of New England; and 
if an invasion it was, then Cotton Mather's argu- 
mentuni ad hominem was quite to the point. Had the 
Quakers, like the Moravians, made settlements and 
cleared the forests for themselves, this argument 
would have been quite disarmed; and had those set- 
tlements been interfered with by the Puritans, the 
injustice would have been far more glaring; nor is it 
probable that the Puritans would have molested such 
colonies — unless they happened to be too near. 

It must be remembered, too, that the Puritans did 
not view Quakers and other zealots as heretics merely, 

197 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

but as dangerous social outlaws. There was among 
the colonists a genuine and natural fear that if the 
tide of extravagant fanaticism once set in, it might 
culminate in such atrocities as had shocked all Europe 
while the Anabaptists, under John of Ley den, were in 
power at Miinster. In the frenzied and naked ex- 
hibitions of Lydia Wardwell and Deborah Wilson 
they saw tendencies which might end in uprooting 
all the social order for which they were striving, and 
might lead at last to the revocation of their char- 
ter. I differ with the greatest unwillingness from 
my old friend John G. Whittier in his explanation 
of a part of these excesses. He thinks that these 
naked performances came from persons who were 
maddened by seeing the partial exposure of Quakers 
whipped through the streets. This view, though 
plausible, seems to me to overlook the highly wrought 
condition of mind among these enthusiasts, and the 
fact that they regarded everything as a symbol. 
When one of the very ablest of the Quakers, Robert 
Barclay, walked the streets of Aberdeen in sackcloth 
and ashes, he deemed it right to sacrifice all propriety 
for the sake of a symbolic act; and in just the same 
spirit we find the Quaker writers of that period 
defending these personal exposures, not by Whit- 
tier's reasons, but for symbolic ones. In Southey's 
Commonplace-Book there is a long extract, to pre- 
cisely this effect, from the life of Thomas Story, an 
English Friend who had travelled in America. He 
seems to have been a moderate man, and to have con- 
demned some of the extravagances of the Ranters, 
but gravely argues that the Quakers might really have 
been commanded by God to exhibit their nakedness 
'■ as a sign." 



ENGLISHMEN IN AMERICA 

Whatever provocation the Friends may have given, 
their persecution is the darkest blot upon the history 
of the time — darker than witchcraft, which was a 
disease of supernatural terror. And like the belief 
in witchcraft, the spirit of persecution could only be 
palliated by the general delusion of the age, by the 
cruelty of the English legislation against the Jesuits, 
which the Puritan legislation closely followed as re- 
garded Quakers; and in general by the attempt to 
unite Church and State, and to take the Old Testa- 
ment for a literal modem statute-book. It must be 
remembered that our horror at this intolerance is 
also stimulated from time to time by certain ex- 
travagant fabrications which still appear as genuine 
in the newspapers; as that imaginary letter said to 
have been addressed by Cotton Mather to a Salem 
clergyman in 1682, and proposing that a colony of 
Quakers be arrested and sold as slaves. This absurd 
forgery appeared first in some Pennsylvania news- 
paper, accompanied by the assertion that this letter 
was in possession of the Massachusetts Historical 
Society. No such paper was ever known to that 
society; Cotton Mather was, at the time alleged, but 
nineteen years old, and the Quaker persecution had 
substantially ceased twenty years before. But when 
did such contradictions ever have any effect on the 
vitality of a lie ? 

The dark and intense convictions of Puritanism 
were seen at their sternest in the witchcraft trials — 
events which took place in almost every colony at 
different times. The wonder is that they showed 
themselves so much less in America than in most 
European nations at the same period. To see this 
delusion in its most frightful form, we must go beyond 

199 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

the Atlantic and far beyond the Hmits of English 
Puritanism. During its course 30,000 victims were 
put to death in Great Britain, 75,000 in France, 
100,000 in Germany, besides those executed in Italy, 
Switzerland, and Sweden, many of them being burned. 
Compared with this vast estimate, which I take 
from that careful historian W. F. Poole, how trivial 
seem the dozen cases to be found in our early colonies ; 
and yet, as Poole justly remarks, these few have at- 
tracted more attention from the world than all the 
rest. Howell, the letter-writer, says, under date of 
February 22, 1647: "Within the compass of two 
years near upon 300 witches were arraigned, and the 
larger part of them executed, in Essex and Suffolk 
[England] only. Scotland swarms with them more 
and more, and persons of good quality are executed 
daily." In a single Swedish village threescore and 
ten witches were discovered, most of whom, includ- 
ing fifteen children, were executed, besides thirty 
children who were compelled to "run the gantlet" 
and be lashed on their hands once a week for a year. 
The eminent English judge Sir Matthew Hale, giving 
his charge at the trial for witchcraft of Rose Cullender 
and Anne Duny in 1668 — a trial which had great 
weight with the American judges — said that he 
" made no doubt there were such Creatures as Witches, 
for the Scriptures affirmed it, and the Wisdom of all 
Nations had provided Laws against such Persons." 
The devout Bishop Hall wrote in England: "Satan's 
prevalency in this Age is most clear, in the marvel- 
lous numbers of Witches abiding in all places. Now 
hundreds are discovered in one Shire." It shows 
that there was, on the whole, a healthy influence 
exerted on Puritanism by American life when we con- 
sop 



ENGLISHMEN IN AMERICA 

sider that the witchcraft excitement was here so 
limited and so short-lived. 

The first recorded case of execution for this offence 
in the colonies is mentioned in Winthrop's journal 
(March, 1646-47), as occurring at Hartford, Connecti- 
cut, where another occurred in 1648, there being also 
one in Boston that same year. Nine more took place 
in Boston and in Connecticut before the great out- 
break at Salem. A curious one appears in the Mary- 
land records of 1654 as having happened on the high 
seas upon a vessel bound to Baltimore, where a wom- 
an was hanged by the seamen upon this charge, the 
case being afterwards investigated by the governor 
and Council. A woman was tried and acquitted in 
Pennsylvania in 1683; one was hanged in Maryland 
for this alleged crime by due sentence of court in 
1685; and one or two cases occurred at New York, 
The excitement finally came to a head in 1692 at 
vSalem, Massachusetts, where nineteen persons were 
hanged, and one "pressed to death" for refusing to 
testify — this being the regularly ordained punish- 
ment for such refusal. The excitement being thus 
relieved, a reaction followed. Brave old Samuel 
Sewall won for himself honor in all coming time by 
rising in his place in the congregation and causing 
to be read an expression of regret for the part he had 
taken in the trials. The reaction did not at once 
reach the southern colonies. Grace Sherwood was 
legally ducked for witchcraft in Virginia in 1705, and 
there was an indictment, followed by acquittal, in 
Maryland as late as 171 2. 

That the delusion reached this point was due to 
no hardened inhumanity of feeling; on the contrary, 
those who participated in it prayed to be delivered 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

from any such emotion. " If a drop of innocent blood 
should be shed in the prosecution of the witchcrafts 
among us, how unhappy are we!" wrote Cotton 
Mather. Accordingly Poole has shown that this 
eminent clergy-man, popularly identified beyond any 
one else with the witchcraft delusion, yet tried to 
have it met by imited prayer rather than by the 
courts; would never attend any of the witchcraft 
trials; cautioned the magistrates against credulity, 
and kept secret to his dying day the names of many 
persons privately inculpated by the witnesses with 
whom he conversed. It was with anguish of spirit 
and the conscientious fidelity of the Anglo - Saxon 
temperament that these men entered upon the work. 
Happy would they have been could they have taken 
such supposed visitations lightly, as the Frenchmen 
on this continent have taken them. Champlain fully 
believed, as has been already stated, that there was a 
devil under the name of the Gougou inhabiting a cer- 
tain island in the St. Lawrence; but he merely crossed 
himself, carolled a French song, and sailed by. Yet 
even in France, as has been seen, the delusion raged 
enormously; and to men of English descent, at any 
rate, it was no such light thing that Satan dwelt 
visibly in the midst of them. Was this to be the 
end of all their labors, their sacrifices? They had 
crossed the ocean, fought off the Indians, cleared the 
forest, built their quaint little houses in the clear- 
ing, extirpated all open vice, and lo! Satan was still 
there in concealment, like the fabled ghost which 
migrated with the family, being packed among the 
beds. There is no mistaking the intensity of their 
lament. See with what depth of emotion Cotton 
Mather utters it : 



ENGLISHMEN IN A iM E R I C A 

" 'Tis a dark time, yea a black night indeed, now the Ty- 
dogs of the Pit are abroad among us, but it is through the 
ivrath of the Lord of Hosts! . . . Blessed Lord! Are all the 
other Instruments of thy Vengeance too good for the chas- 
tisement of such Transgressors as we are? Must the very 
Devils be sent out of their oivn plase to be our troublers? . . . 
They are not swarthy Indians, but they are sooty Devils 
that are let loose upon us." 

Thus wrote Cotton Mather, he who had sat at the 
bedside of the "bewitched" Margaret Rule and had 
distinctly smelled sulphur. 

While the English of the second generation were 
thus passing through a phase of Puritanism more 
intense than any they brought with them, the col- 
onies were steadily increasing in population, and 
were modifying in structure towards their later 
shape. Delaware had passed from Swedish under 
Dutch control, Governor Stuyvesant having taken 
possession of the colony in 1647 with small resistance. 
Then the whole Dutch territory, thus enlarged, was 
transferred to English dominion, quite against the 
will of the same headstrong governor, known as 
" Hardkoppig Piet." The Dutch had thriven, in 
spite of their patroons, and their slaves, and their 
semblance of aristocratic government ; they had built 
forts in Connecticut, claimed Cape Cod for a boun- 
dary, and even stretched their demands as far as 
Maine. All their claims and possessions were at last 
surrendered without striking a blow. When the 
British fleet appeared off Long Island, the whole or- 
ganized Dutch force included only some two hundred 
men fit for duty, scattered from Albany to Delaware; 
the inhabitants of New Amsterdam refused to take 
up arms, although Governor Stuyvesant would fain 

203 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

have had them, and he was so enraged that he tore 
to pieces the letter from Nicolls, the EngHsh com- 
mander, to avoid showing it. "The surrender," he 
said, "would be reproved in the fatherland." But 
the people utterly refused to stand by him, and he 
was thus compelled, sorely against his will, to sur- 
render. The English entered into complete occupa- 
tion; New Netherland became New York; some of 
the Dutch local names were abolished, although des- 
tined to be restored during the later Dutch occupa- 
tion, which again ceased in 1674. Yet the impress of 
that nationality remains to this day on the names, 
the architecture, and the customs of that region, and 
has indeed tinged those of the whole country; and 
the Dutch had securely founded what was from its 
early days the most cosmopolitan city of America. 

Their fall left the English in absolute possession of 
a line of colonies that stretched from Maine south- 
ward. This now included some new settlements made 
during the period just described. Carolina, as it had 
been called a hundred years before by Jean Ribaut 
and his French Protestants, was granted in 1663, by 
King Charles the Second, to eight proprietors, who 
brought with them a plan of government framed for 
them by the celebrated John Locke — probably the 
most unpractical scheme of government ever proposed 
for a new colony by a philosopher, and fortunately 
resisted from the very beginning by the common- 
sense of the colonists. Being the most southern col- 
ony, Carolina was drawn into vexatious wars with 
the Spaniards, the French, and the Indians; but it 
was many years before it was divided by the King 
into two parts, and before Georgia was settled. An- 
other grant by Charles the Second was more wisely 

204 



ENGLISHMEN IN AMERICA 

planned, when in 1681 William Penn sent out some 
emigrants, guided by no philosopher except Penn 
himself, who came the following year. A great tract 
of country was granted to him as a sort of equivalent 
for a debt owed by the King to his father, Admiral 
Penn ; the annual rental was to be two beaver-skins. 
Everything seemed to throw around the coming of 
William Penn the aspect of a lofty enterprise; his 
ship was named The Welcome ; his new city was 
to be called "Brotherly Love," or "Philadelphia." 
His harmonious relations with the Indians have been 
the wonder of later times, though it must be remem- 
bered that he had to do with no such fierce tribes as 
had devastated the other colonies. Peace prevailed 
with sectarian zealots, and even towards those charged 
with witchcraft. Yet even Philadelphia did not es- 
cape the evil habits of the age, and established the 
whipping-post, the pillory, and the stocks — the for- 
mer of which Delaware, long a part of Pennsyl- 
vania, still retains. But there is no such scene of 
contentment in our pioneer history as that which 
the early annals of " Penn's Woods" (Pennsylvania) 
record. 

Other great changes were meanwhile taking place. 
New Hampshire and New Jersey came to be recog- 
nized as colonies by themselves; the union of the 
New England colonies was dissolved; Plymouth was 
merged in Massachusetts, New Haven in Connecti- 
cut, Delaware temporarily in Pennsylvania. At the 
close of the period which I have called the second 
generation (1700) there were ten distinct English col- 
onies along the coast — New Hampshire, Massachu- 
setts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New 
Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, Carolina. 

205 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

It is a matter of profound interest to observe that 
whatever may be the variations among these early set- 
tlements, we find everywhere the distinct traces of the 
old English village communities, which again are 
traced by Freeman and others to a Swiss or German 
origin. The founders of the first New England towns 
did not simply settle themselves upon the principle 
of "squatter sovereignty," each for himself; but 
they founded municipal organizations, based on a 
common control of the land. So systematically was 
this carried out that in an old town like Cambridge, 
Massachusetts, for instance, it would be easy at this 
day, were all the early tax-lists missing, to determine 
the comparative worldly condition of the different 
settlers simply by comparing the proportion which 
each had to maintain of the great "pallysadoe," or 
paling, which surrounded the little settlement. These 
amounts varied from seventy rods, in case of the 
richest, to two rods, in case of the poorest; and so 
well was the work done that the traces of the " fosse" 
about the paling still remain in the willow-trees on 
the old playground of the Harvard students. These 
early settlers reproduced, though with important 
modifications, those local institutions which had 
come to them from remote ancestors. The town 
paling, the town - meeting, the town common, the 
town pound, the fence-viewers, the field-drivers, the 
militia muster, even the tipstaves of the constables, 
are "survivals" of institutions older than the Nor- 
man conquest of England. Even the most matter- 
of-fact transactions of their daily life, as the transfer 
of land by giving a piece of turf, an instance of which » 
occurred at Salem, Massachusetts, in 1696, some- 
times carry us back to usages absolutely mediaeval— 

206 



ENGLISHMEN IN A M ERIC A 

in this case to the transfer "by turf and twig," so 
familiar to historians, although it is unsafe to press 
th»se analogies too far, since the aboriginal tribes 
sometimes practised the same usage. A material ad- 
dition of the New England settlers to their traditional 
institutions — in reality a great addition — was the sys- 
tem of common schools. Beyond New England the 
analogies with inherited custom are less clear and un- 
mistakable ; but it is now maintained that the south- 
ern "parish" and "county," the South Carolina 
"court-greens" and "common pastures," as well as 
the Maryland "manors" and "courts-leet," all repre- 
sent, under different combinations, the same inher- 
ited principle of communal sovereignty. 

The period which I have assigned to the second 
generation in iVmerica may be considered to have 
lasted from 1650 to 1700. Even during this period 
there took place collisions of purpose and interest 
between the home government and the colonies. The 
contest for the charters, for instance, and the short- 
lived power of Sir Edmund Andros, occurred within 
the time which has here been treated, but they were 
the forerunners of a later contest, and will be included 
in another chapter. It will then be necessary to de- 
scribe the gradual transformation which made col- 
onies into provinces, and out of a varied emigration 
developed a homogeneous people; which taught the 
English ministry to distrust the Americans, while it 
unconsciously weaned the Americans from England; 
so that the tie which at first had expressed only af- 
fection became at last a hated yoke, soon to be 
thrown aside forever. 



IX 

THE BRITISH YOKE 

HOW deep and tender was the love with which the 
first American colonists looked back to their 
early home ! Many proofs of this might be cited from 
their writings, but I know of none quite so eloquent 
as that burst of impassioned feeling in a sermon by 
William Hooke — cousin and afterwards chaplain of 
Oliver Cromwell — who came to America about 1636, 
and preached this discourse at Taunton, July 3, 1640, 
under the title, " New England's Teares for Old Eng- 
land's Feares." This whole production is marked by 
a learning and eloquence that remind us of one who 
may have been Hooke's fellow-student at Oxford, 
Jeremy Taylor; indeed, it contains a description of a 
battle which, if Taylor had written it, would have 
been quoted in every history of English literature 
until this day. And in this sermon the clergyman 
thus speaks of the mother-country: 

"There is no Land that claimes our name but England; 
wee are distinguished from all the Nations in the World by 
the name of English. There is no Potentate breathing that 
wee call our dread Sovereigne but King Charles, nor Lawes 
of any Land have civilized us but England's; there is no 
Nation that calls us Countrey-men but the English. Breth- 
ren! Did wee not there draw in our first breath? Did not 
the Sunne first shine there upon our heads? Did not that 
Land first beare us, even that pleasant Island, but for sinne, 
I would say, that Garden of the Lord, that Paradise?" 

208 



THE BRITISH YOKE 

What changed all this deep tenderness into the 
spirit that found the British yoke detestable and at 
length cast it off ? 

There have been many other great changes in 
America since that day. The American fields have 
been altered by the steady advance of imported weeds 
and flowers; the buttercup, the dandelion, and the 
ox-eyed daisy displacing the anemone and violet. 
The American physique is changed to a slenderer and 
more finely organized type ; the American tempera- 
ment has grown more sensitive, more pliant, more 
adaptive; the American voice has been shifted to a 
higher key, perhaps yielding greater music when fitly 
trained. Of all these changes we see the result, but 
cannot trace the steps ; and it is almost as difficult.to 
trace the successive impulses by which the love of 
everything that was English was transformed into a 
hatred of the British yoke. 

Yet its beginnings may be obser\-ed in much that 
the colonists did, and in some things which they 
omitted. Within ten years after Hooke's loving ref- 
erence to King Charles, there was something omi- 
nous in the cool self-control with which the people of 
Massachusetts refrained from either approving or dis- 
approving his ex'ecution. It was equally ominous 
when they abstained from recognizing the accession 
of Richard Cromwell, and when they let fifteen 
months pass before sending a congratulatory address 
to Charles the Second. It was the beginning of a 
policy of indifference more significant than any policy 
of resistance. When in 1660, under that monarch, the 
first Act of Navigation was passed, prescribing that 
no merchandise should be imported into the planta- 
tions but in English vessels navigated by English- 
14 209 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

men, the New England colonies simply ignored it. 
During sixteen years the Massachusetts governor, an- 
nually elected by the people, never once took the 
oath which the Navigation Acts required of him ; and 
when the courageous Leverett was called to account 
for this he answered, " The King can in reason do no 
less than let us enjoy our liberties and trade, for we 
have made this large plantation of our own charge, 
without any contribution from the crown." Four 
years after the Act of Navigation, in 1664, the Eng- 
lish fleet brought royal commissioners to Boston, 
with instructions aiming at further aggression; and 
there was great dignity in the response of the Gen- 
eral Court, made through Governor Endicott, October 
30,' 1664: " The all-knowing God he knowes our great- 
est ambition is to Hue a poore and quiet life in a cor- 
ner of the world, without offence to God or man. 
Wee came not into this wilderness to seeke great 
things to ourselves, and if any come after vs to seeke 
them heere, they will be disappointed." They then 
declare that to yield to the demands of the com- 
missioners would be simply to destroy their own lib- 
erties, expressly guaranteed to them by their King, 
and dearer than their lives. 

The commissioners visited other colonies and then 
returned to Boston, where they announced that they 
should hold a court at the house of Captain Thomas 
Breedon on Hanover Street, at 9 a.m., May 24, 1665. 
It happened that a brother officer of Captain Bree- 
don, one Colonel Cartwright, who had come over with 
the commissioners, was then lying ill with the gout 
at this same house. At eight in the morning a mes- 
senger of the General Court appeared beneath the 
window, blew an alarum on the trumpet, and pro- 



THE BRITISH YOKE 

claimed that the General Court protested against any- 
such meeting. He then departed to make similar 
proclamation in other parts of the town; and when 
the royal commissioners came together they found 
nobody with whom to confer but the gouty and irate 
Colonel Cartwright, enraged at the disturbance of his 
morning slumbers. So perished all hope of coercing 
the Massachusetts colony at that time. 

Thus early did the British yoke begin to make it- 
self felt as a grievance. The Massachusetts men dis- 
creetly allayed the effect of their protest by sending 
his Majesty a ship-load of masts, the freight on which 
cost the colony ;^i6oo. For ten years the quarrel 
subsided : England had trouble enough with her neigh- 
bors without meddling with the colonies. Then the 
contest revived, and while the colonies were in the 
death-struggle of Philip's war, Edward Randolph 
came as commissioner with a King's letter in 1675. 
Two years later the Massachusetts colonists made for 
the first time the distinct assertion to the King, while 
pledging their loyalty, that "the laws of England 
were bounded within the four seas, and did not reach 
America," giving as a reason for this, "they [the 
colonists] not being represented in Parliament." Then 
followed the long contest for the charter, while Ed- 
ward Randolph, like a sort of Mephistopheles, was 
constantly coming and going between America and 
England with fresh complaints and new orders, cross- 
ing the Atlantic eight- times in nine years, and having 
always, by his own statement, " pressed the necessity 
of a general Governor as absolutely necessary for the 
honor and service of the crown." All this long series 
of contests has been minutely narrated by Charles 
Deane with a thoroughness and clearness which would 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

have won him a world-wide reputation had they only 
been brought to bear upon the history of some little' 
European state. Again and again, in different forms, 
the attempt was made to take away the charters of 
the colonies; and the opposition was usually led, at 
least in New England, by the clergy. Increase 
Mather, in 1683-84, addressed a town -meeting in 
opposition to one such demand, and openly coun- 
selled that they should return Naboth's answer when 
Ahab asked for his vineyard, that they would not 
give up the inheritance of their fathers. 

It must be remembered that all the early charters 
were defective in this, that they did not clearly define 
where the line was to be drawn between the rights of 
the local government and of the crown. We can see 
now that such definition would have been impossible ; 
even the promise given to Lord Baltimore that Mary- 
land should have absolute self-government did not 
avert all trouble. It is also to be remembered that 
there were great legal difficulties in annulling a char- 
ter, so long as the instrument itself had not been re- 
claimed by the power that issued it. We read with 
surprise of a royal scheme thwarted by so simple a 
process as the hiding of the Connecticut charter in a 
hollow tree by William Wadsworth; but an almost 
vital importance was attached in those days to the 
actual possession of the instnmient. It was consider- 
ed the most momentous of all the Lord Chancellor's 
duties — indeed, that from which he^had his name 
(cancellarius) — to literally cancel and obliterate the 
King's letters-patent under the great seal. Hence, 
although the old charter of Massachusetts was vacated 
October 23, 1684, it has always been doubted by law- 
yers whether this was ever legally done, inasmuch as 

212 



THE BRITISH YOKE 

the old charter never was cancelled and hangs intact 
in the office of the Massachusetts Secretary of State 
to this day. In 1686 came the new governor for the 
colonies — not the dreaded Colonel Kirke, who had 
been fully expected, but the less formidable Sir Ed- 
mund Andros. 

The first foretaste of the provincial life, as distinct 
from the merely colonial, was in the short-lived ca- 
reer of this ruler. He came, a brilliant courtier, 
among the plain Americans; his servants wore gay 
liveries; Lady Andros had the first coach seen in Bos- 
ton. He was at different times Governor of New 
York, President of New England, and Governor of 
Virginia. Everywhere he was received with aver- 
sion, but everywhere this was tempered by the feel- 
ing that it might have been worse, for it might have 
been Kirke. Yet there was exceeding frankness in 
the way the colonists met their would-be tyrant. 
When he visited Hartford, Connecticut, for instance, 
he met Dr. Hooker one morning, and said, " I sup- 
pose all the good people of Connecticut are fasting 
and praying on my account." The doctor replied, 
" Yes, we read, ' This kind goeth not out but by fast- 
ing and prayer.'" And it required not merely these 
methods, but something more, to eject Sir Edmund 
at last from the colonies. 

The three years' sway of Sir Edmund Andros ac- 
customed the minds of the American colonists to a 
new relation between themselves and England. Even 
where the old relation was not changed in form it 
was changed in feeling. The colonies which had 
seemed most secure in their self-government were 
liable at any moment to become mere royal prov- 
inces. Indeed, they were officially informed that his 

213 



HISTORY OF TflE UNITED STATES 

Majesty had decided to unite under one government 
"all the English territories in America, from Dela- 
ware Bay to Nova Scotia," though this was not 
really attempted. Yet charters were taken away al- 
most at random, colonies were divided or united 
without the consent of their inhabitants, and the vio- 
lation of the right of local government was every- 
where felt. But in various ways, directly or indi- 
rectly, the purposes of Andros were thwarted. When 
the English revolution of 1688 came, his power fell 
without a blow, and he found himself in the hands 
of the rebellious men of Boston. The day had passed 
by when English events could be merely ignored, 
and so every colony proclaimed with joy the acces- 
sion of William and Mary. Such men as Jacob Leis- 
ler, in New York, Robert Treat, in Connecticut, and 
the venerable Simon Bradstreet — ^then eighty-seven 
years old — in Massachusetts, were at once recog- 
nized as the leaders of the people. There was some 
temporary disorder, joined with high hope, but the 
colonies never really regained what they had lost, and 
henceforth held, more or less distinctly, the char- 
acter of provinces, until they took their destiny, long 
after, into their own hands. It needed almost a cen- 
tury to prepare them for that event, not only by 
their increasing sense of grievance, but by learning 
to stretch out their hands to one another. 

With the fall of the colonial charters fell the New 
England confederacy that had existed from 1643. 
There were other plans of union : William Penn form- 
ed a very elaborate one in 1698; others labored after- 
wards in pamphlets to modify his plan or to suggest 
their own. On nine different occasions, between 
1684 and 1 75 1, three or more colonies met in council, 

214 



THE BRITISH YOKE 

represented by their governors or by their commis- 
sioners, to consult on internal affairs, usually with 
reference to the Indians; but they apparently never 
had a thought of disloyalty, and certainly never pro- 
claimed independence; nor did their meetings for a 
long time suggest any alarm in the minds of the 
British ministry. The new jealousies that arose re- 
lated rather to commercial restrictions than to the 
form of government. 

It is necessary to remember that even in colonial 
days, while it was of the greatest importance that 
the British law-makers should know all about the 
colonies, there was on their part even a denser igno- 
rance as to American affairs than that which now im- 
presses the travelling American in England. When 
he is asked if he came from America by land, it is 
only a matter for amusement; but when, as James 
Otis tells us — writing in 1764 — it was not uncom- 
mon for official papers to come from an English Sec- 
retary of State addressed to "the Governor of the 
island of New England," it was a more serious mat- 
ter. Under such circumstances the .home govern- 
ment was liable at any minute to be swept away 
from all just policy by some angry tale told by Ran- 
dolph or x\ndros. The prevalent British feeling tow- 
ards the colonies was one of indifference, broken only 
by outbursts of anger and spasms of commercial self- 
ishness. 

The event which startled the British ministry from 
this indifference was the taking of Louisburg in 1745, 
as described in a previous chapter. This success may 
have been, as has been asserted, only a lucky acci- 
dent; no matter, it startled not only America but 
Europe. That a fortress deemed impregnable by 

215 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

French engineers and amply garrisoned by French 
soldiers should have been captured by a mob of 
farmers and fisherrrien — this gave subject for reflec- 
tion. "Every one knows the importance of Louis- 
burg," wrote James Otis, proudly, "in the consulta- 
tions of Aix-la-Chapelle." Voltaire, in writing the 
history of Louis the Fifteenth, heads the chapter of 
the calamities of France with this event. He de- 
clares that the mere undertaking of such an enter- 
prise showed of what a community was capable when 
it united the spirit of trade and of war. The siege 
of Louisburg, he says, was not due to the cabinet at 
London, but solely to the daring of the New Eng- 
land traders {" ce jut le fruit de la hardiesse des mar- 
chands de la Nouvelle Angleterre"). But while the 
feeling inspired on the European continent was one 
of respect, that created in England was mingled with 
dread. Was, then, the child learning to do without 
the parent? And certainly the effect on the minds 
of the Americans looked like anything but the devel- 
opment of humility. Already the colonies, from 
Massachusetts to Virginia, were eagerly planning the 
conquest of Canada, they to furnish the whole land 
force and Great Britain the fleet — a project which 
failed through the fears of the British ministry. The 
Duke of Bedford, then at the head of the naval ser- 
vice, frankly objected to it because of "the indepen- 
dence it might create in these provinces, when they 
shall see within themselves so great an army possessed 
by so great a country by right of conquest." And the 
Swedish traveller, Peter Kalm, writing three years 
later from New York, put the whole matter yet more 
clearly, thus: "There is reason for doubting whether 
the King, if he had the power, would wish to drive 

216 



THE BRITISH YOKE 

the French from their possessions in Canada. . . . The 
English government has therefore reason to regard 
the French in North America as the chief power that 
urges their colonies to submission." Any such im- 
pressions were naturally confirmed when, in 1748, 
the indignant American colonists saw Louisburg go 
back to the French under the treaty of Aix-la-Cha- 
pelle. 

The trouble was that the British government wish- 
ed the colonies to unite sufficiently to check the French 
designs, but not enough to assert their own power. 
Thus the ministry positively encouraged the conven- 
tion of delegates from the New England colonies and 
from New York, Pennsylvania, and Maryland, which 
met at Albany on June 19, 1754. It was in this con- 
ventif)n that Franklin began a course of national in- 
fluence which was long continued, and brought for- 
ward his famous representation of the snake dismem- 
bered, with the motto "Unite or Die." He showed 
also his great organizing power by carrying through 
the convention a plan for a council of forty-eight 
members distributed among the different colonies, 
and having for its head a royal presiding officer with 
veto power. All the delegates, except those from 
Connecticut, sustained the plan; it was only when it 
went to the several colonies and the British ministry 
that it failed. Its ill success in these two directions 
came from diametrically opposite reasons: the col- 
onies thought that it gave them too little power, and 
the King's Council found in it just the reverse fault. 
It failed, but its failure left on the public mind an 
increased sense of divergence between England and 
America. Merely to have conceived such a plan was 
a great step towards the American Union that came 

217 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

afterwards; but still there was no conscious shrink- 
ing from the British yoke. 

The ten colonies which had a separate existence in 
1700 had half a century later grown to thirteen. 
Delaware, after having been merged in Pennsylvania, 
was again separated from it in 1 703 ; North and South 
Carolina were permanently divided in 1729; Georgia 
was settled in 1733. No colony had a nobler foun- 
dation: it was planned by its founder — a British 
general and a member of Parliament — expressly as a 
refuge for poor debtors and other unfortunates; the 
colony was named Georgia in honor of the King, but 
it was given to the proprietors "in trust for the poor," 
and its seal had a family of silk-worms, with the 
motto "Not for yourselves" (Sic vos non vobis). 
Oglethorpe always kept friendship with the Indians; 
he refused to admit either slavery or ardent spirits 
into the colony. But his successors did not adhere 
to his principles, and the colony was small and weak 
up to the time of the coming separation from England. 
Yet the growth of the colonies as a whole was strong 
and steady. Bancroft estimates their numbers in 
1754 at 1,185,000 whites and 260,500 colored, mak- 
ing in all nearly a million and a half. Counting the 
whites only, Massachusetts took the lead in popula- 
tion; counting both races, Virginia. "Some few 
towns excepted," wrote Dickinson soon after, "we 
are all tillers of the earth, from Nova Scotia to West 
Florida. We are a people of cultivators, scattered 
over an immense territory, communicating with each 
other by means of good roads and navigable rivers, 
united by the silken bands of mild government, all 
respecting the laws without dreading their power, 
because they are equitable." 

218 



THE BRITISH YOKE 

But if the colonies had all been composed of peace- 
ful agriculturists, the British yoke would have been 
easy. It was on the commercial settlements that the 
exactions of the home government bore most severely, 
and hence it was that the eastern colonies, which had 
suffered most in the Indian wars, were again to en- 
dure most oppression. An English political econ- 
omist of 1690, in a tract included in the Harleian 
Miscellany, pointed out that there were two classes 
of colonies in America; that England need have no 
jealousy of those which raised only sugar and tobacco 
and thus gave her a market ; but she must keep anx- 
ious watch on those which competed with England 
in fishing and trade, and "threatened in time a total 
independence therefrom." "When America shall be 
so well peopled, civilized, and divided into kingdoms," 
wrote Sir Thomas Browne about the same time, 
"they are like to have so little regard of their origi- 
nals as to acknowledge no subjection unto them." 
All the long series of arbitrary measures which fol- 
lowed w^ere but the effort of the British government 
to avert this danger. The conquest of Canada, by 
making the colonies more important, only disposed 
the ministry to enforce obnoxious laws that had 
hitherto been dead letters. 

Such laws were the Navigation Acts, and the 
"Sugar Act," and what were known generally as the 
"Acts of Trade," all aimed at the merchants of New 
England and New York. Out of this grew the Writs 
of Assistance, which gave authority to search any 
house for merchandise liable to duty, and which were 
resisted in a celebrated argument by James Otis in 
1 76 1. Then came the Declaratory Resolves of 1764, 
which were the precursors of the Stamp Act. 

2 19 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

The discussion occasioned by these measures was 
more important than any other immediate effect 
they produced; they afforded an academy of poHtical 
education for the people. Those who had called 
themselves Whigs gradually took the name of Pa- 
triots, and from Patriots they became " Sons of 
Liberty." Every successive measure struck at once 
the double chord of patriotism and pocket, so that 
"Liberty and property" became the common cry. 
The colonists took the position, which is found every- 
where in Otis's Rights of the Colonies, that their claims 
were not dependent alone on the validity of their 
charters, but that their rights as British subjects 
were quite sufficient to protect them. 

From this time forth the antagonism increased, 
and it so roused and united the people that the stu- 
dent wonders how it happened that the actual out- 
break was delayed so long. It is quite remarkable, 
in view of the recognized differences among the col- 
onies, that there should have been such unanimity in 
tone. There was hardly anything to choose, in point 
of weight and dignity, between the protests drawn 
up by Oxenbridge Thacher in Massachusetts, by 
Stephen Hopkins in Rhode Island, by the brothers 
Livingston in New York, and by Lee and Wythe in 
Virginia. The southern colonies, which suffered 
least from the exactions of the home government, 
made common cause with those which suffered most. 
All the colonies claimed, in the words of the Virginia 
Assembly, "their ancient and indestructible right of 
being governed by such laws respecting their internal 
polity and taxation as were derived from their own 
consent, with the approbation of their sovereign or 
his substitute." 

220 



THE BRITISH YOKE 

The blow fell in 1765, with the Stamp Act — an 
act which would not have been unjust or unreason- 
able in England, and was only held so in America 
because it involved the principle of taxing where 
there was no representation. For a moment the 
colonies seemed stunned; then the bold protest of 
Patrick Henry in Virginia was taken up by James 
Otis in Massachusetts. He it was who proposed an 
American Congress in 1765, and though only nine 
out of the thirteen colonies sent delegates, this 
brought them nearer than ever before. It drew up 
its Declaration of Rights. Then followed, in col- 
ony after colony, mobs and burnings in effigy; no- 
body dared to act as stamp officer. When the news 
reached England, the Earl of Chatham said: "The 
gentleman tells us that America is obstinate, America 
is almost in open rebellion. I rejoice that America 
has resisted." Then came the riot between people 
and soldiers, called the "Boston Massacre," in 1770, 
and the burning by the people of the armed British 
schooner Gas pee, in Narragansett Bay, in 1772. In 
1773 the tea was thrown into the harbor at Boston; 
at Annapolis it was burned ; at Charleston it was 
stored and left to spoil; at New York and Philadel- 
phia it was returned. The next year came the Bos- 
ton Port Bill, received with public mourning in the 
other colonies and with grim endurance by the Bos- 
tonians. A thriving commercial town suddenly found 
itself unable to receive any vessel whose cargo had 
not been first landed at a port then thirty miles away 
by road— Marblehead — or to discharge any except 
through a custom-house at Plymouth, then forty 
miles by road in the other direction. All the indus- 
tries of the place were stopped, and the price of fuel 

221 



11 I vS TORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

and provisions rose one-third ; for every stick of wood 
and every barrel of molasses had to be landed first 
on the wharf at Marblehead and then laboriously re- 
shipped to Boston, or be sent on the long road by 
land. But as tyranny usually reacts upon itself, the 
voluntary contributions which came from all parts 
of the colonies to the suffering town did more to ce- 
ment a common feeling than years of prosperity could 
have done. 

In this chafed and oppressed position the people 
of Boston awaited events and the country looked on. 
Meanwhile the first Continental Congress had met at 
Philadelphia, vSeptember 5, 1774, with a sole view to 
procuring a redress of grievances, the people of every 
colony pledging themselves in one form or another 
to abide by the decision of this body. In July of that 
year, long before the thought of separation took shape 
even in the minds of the leaders, Ezra Stiles wrote 
this prophecy: "If oppression proceeds, despotism 
may originate an American Magna Charta and Bill 
of Rights, supported by such intrepid and persever- 
ing importunity as even sovereignty may hereafter 
judge it not wise to withstand. There will be a 
Runnymede in America." Such was the change from 
1640 to 1774; the mother-country which to Hooke 
signified paradise, to Stiles signified oppression; the 
one clergyman wrote to deprecate war in England, 
the other almost invoked it in America. 

The Congress met, every colony but little Georgia 
being soon represented. Its meeting signified that 
the colonies were at last united. In Patrick Henry's 
great opening speech he said: " British oppression has 
effaced the boundaries of the several colonies; the 
distinctions between Virginians, Pennsylvanians, New- 



THE BRITISH Y O K P: 

Yorkers, and New - Englanders are no more. I am 
not a Virginian; I am an American." 

There is, I think, an undue tendency in these days 
to exaggerate the differences between the colonies; 
and in bringing them to the eve of a great struggle 
it is needful to consider how far they were different 
and how far they were one. In fact, the points of 
resemblance among the different colonies far exceed- 
ed the points of difference. They were mainly of the 
same English race; they were mainly Puritans in 
religion; they bore with them the local institutions 
and traditions; all held slaves, though in varying pro- 
portions. On the other hand, they were subject to 
certain variations of climate, pursuits, and local in- 
stitutions; but, after all, these were secondary; the 
resemblances were more important. 

The style of architecture prevailing throughout the 
colonies in the early part of the eighteenth century 
gives proof enough that the mode of living among 
the higher classes at that period must everywhere 
have been much the same. The same great square 
edifices, the same stacks of chimneys, the same tiles, 
the same mahogany stairways, and the same carving 
are still to be seen in the old dwellings of Portsmouth, 
Newburyport, Salem, Boston, Newport, Philadelphia, 
Annapolis, and Norfolk. When Washington came 
from Mount Vernon to Cambridge as commander of 
the American army, he occupied as headquarters a 
house resembling in many respects his own ; and this 
was one of a line of similar houses, afterwards known 
as "Tory Row," and extending from Harvard College 
to Mount Auburn. These were but the types of the 
whole series of colonial or rather provincial houses, 
north and south. Sometimes they were built of 

223 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

wood, the oaken frames being brought from England, 
sometimes of brick brought from Scotland, some- 
times of stone. The chief difference between the 
northern and southern houses was that the cham- 
bers, being less important in a warm country, were 
less ample and comfortable in the southern houses, 
and the windows were smaller, while for the same 
reason there was much more lavishness in the way 
of piazzas. Every one accustomed to the old north- 
ern houses is surprised at the inadequate chambers 
of Mount Vernon, and it appears from the diary of 
Mr. Frost, a New England traveller in 1797, that he 
was then so struck with the smallness of the win- 
dows as to have made a note of it. The stairway 
at Arlington is singularly disproportioned to the ex- 
ternal dignity of the house, and there is a tradition 
that at the funeral of Jefferson the stairway of his 
house at Monticello proved too narrow for the coffm, 
so that it had to be lowered from the window. All 
this was the result of the out-door climate, and apart 
from these trivial variations the life north and south 
was much the same — stately and ceremonious in the 
higher classes, with social distinctions much more 
thoroughly marked than we are now accustomed to 
remember. 

We know by the private memoirs of the provincial 
period — for instance, from the charming recollections 
of Mrs. Quincy — that the costumes and manners of 
the upper classes were everywhere modelled on the 
English style of the period. Even after the war of 
independence, when the wealthier inhabitants of Bos- 
ton had largely gone into exile at Halifax, the church- 
es were still filled on important occasions with gentle- 
men wearing wigs, cocked hats, and scarlet cloaks ; and 

224 



THE BRITISH \' O K E 

before the Revolution the display must have been far 
greater. In Maryland, at a somewhat earlier period, 
we find an advertisement in the Maryland Gazette of 
a servant who offers himself " to wait on table, curry 
horses, clean knives, boots, and shoes, lay a table, 
shave, and dress wigs, carry a lantern, and talk 
French; is as honest as the times will admit, and as 
sober as can be." From this standard of a servant's 
accomplishments we can easily infer the mode of life 
among the masters. 

A striking illustration of these social demarcations 
is to be found in the general catalogues, now called 
"triennial" or "quinquennial," of our older colleges. 
Down to the year 1767 at Yale, and 1772 at Harvard, 
the students of each class will be found arranged in 
an order which is not alphabetical, as at the present 
day, but seems arbitrary. Not at all; they were ar- 
ranged according to the social positions of their par- 
ents ; and we know from the recollections of the vener- 
able Paine Wingate that the first thing done by the 
college authorities on the admission of a new class 
was to ascertain by careful inquiry these facts. Ac- 
cording to the result of the inquiry, the young stu- 
dents were " placed" in the dining-hall and the recita- 
tion-room, and upon this was also based the choice of 
college rooms. Had they always retained this rela- 
tive standing it would have been less galling, but 
while the most distinguished student could not rise 
in the list, the reprobates could fall; and the best 
scholar in the class might find himself not merely in 
a low position through his parentage, but flanked on 
each side by scions of more famed families who had 
been degraded by their own folly or vice. There could 
not be a more conclusive proof that American pro- 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

vincial society, even in the eastern colonies, was 
founded, before the final separation from England, 
on an essentially aristocratic basis. 

In the same connection it must be remembered that 
in the eighteenth century slavery gave the tone of 
manners through all the colonies. No matter how 
small the proportion of slaves, experience shows that 
it affected the whole habit of society. In Massa- 
chusetts, in 1775, there was probably a population of 
some 350,000, of whom but 5000 were slaves. It 
was enough; the effect followed. It was in Cam- 
bridge, Massachusetts, not in Virginia, that Long- 
fellow found his tradition of the lady who was buried 
by her own order with slave attendants : 

"At her feet and at her head 
Lies a slave to attend the dead; 
But their dust is as white as hers." 

It is curious to compare the command of this dying 
woman of the Vassall race — whether it was an act of 
arrogance or of humility- -with the self-humiliation 
of a Virginia dame of the same period who directed 
the burial of her body beneath that portion of the 
church occupied by the poor, since she had despised 
them in life, and wished them to trample upon her 
when dead. 

Let us consider, by way of further illustration, the 
way of living on the Narragansett shore of Rhode 
Island, and see how closely it resembled that of Vir- 
ginia. The late venerable Isaac Peace Hazard, of New- 
port, Rhode Island, told me that his great-grand- 
father, Robert Hazard, of Narragansett, used in later 
life, when he had given away many of his fanns to 
his children, to congratulate himself on the small 

226 



THE BRITISH YOKE 

limits to which he had reduced his household, having 
only seventy in parlor and kitchen. He occupied at 
one time nearly twelve thousand acres of land, and 
kept some four thousand sheep, from whose fleece 
his large household was almost wholly clothed. He 
had in his dairy twelve negro women, all slaves, and 
each having a young girl to assist her ; each dairy-maid 
had the care of twelve cows, and they were expected 
to make from one to two dozen cheeses every day. 
This was the agricultural and domestic side; the so- 
cial life consisted of one long series of gay entertain- 
ments, visiting from house to house, fox-hunting and 
horse-racing with the then famous breed of Narra- 
gansett pacers. Mr. Hazard had known old men 
who in their youth had gone to Virginia to ride their 
own horses at races, and kept open house for the Vir- 
ginia riders in return. To illustrate how thoroughly 
the habits of slavery were infused into the daily life, 
he told me that another of these Narragansett mag- 
nates, his great-uncle, Rowland Robinson, said, im- 
pulsively, one day: "I have not servants enough; go 
fetch me some from Guinea." Upon this the mas- 
ter of a small packet of twenty tons, belonging to 
Mr. Robinson, fitted her out at once, set sail for 
Guinea, and brought home eighteen slaves, one of 
whom was a king's son. His employer burst into 
tears on their arrival, his order not having been seri- 
ously given. But all this was not in Maryland or 
Virginia; it was in Rhode Island, and on a part of 
Rhode Island so much a place of resort for the leading 
Boston families that a portion of it is called Boston 
Neck to this day. 

These descriptions could be paralleled, though not 
fully, in all the northern colonies. The description 

227 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED S T A T E vS 

of the Schuyler family, and of their way of living at 
Albany, as given by Mrs. Grant, of Laggan, about 
1750, is quite on a par with these early scenes at 
Narragansett. In Connecticut it is recorded of John 
Peters, father of the early and malicious historian of 
that name, that he " aped the style of a British noble- 
man, built his house in a forest, kept his coach, and 
looked with some degree of scorn upon republicans." 
The stone house of the Lee family at Marblehead cost 
;^io,ooo; the house of Godfrey Malbone at Newport 
cost ^20,000 ; the Wentworth house at Portsmouth 
had fifty-two rooms. Through all the colonies these 
evidences of a stately way of living were to be found. 
These facts are unquestionable, and would not so 
fully have passed out of sight but for another fact 
never yet fully explained. When the war of inde- 
pendence came it made no social change in the south- 
ern provinces, but it made a social revolution in the 
northern provinces. For some reason, perhaps only 
for the greater nearness to Nova Scotia, the gentry 
of New England took the loyal side and fled, while the 
gentry of Virginia fell in with the new movement, be- 
coming its leaders. From my window, as I write, I 
have glimpses of some of the large houses of "Tory 
Row," in Cambridge, where, according to the contem- 
porary description of the Baroness Riedesel, seven kin- 
dred families lived in the greatest luxury until the Rev- 
olution, all probably slave-holders, like the Vassalls, 
and some of them owning plantations in Jamaica. All 
fied, most of their estates were confiscated, and the 
war transferred the leadership of the New England 
colonies, as Professor Sumner has well shown in his 
Life of Jackson, to a new race of young lawyers. 
Hence all the ante - Revolutionary life disappeared 

228 




FIRST VIRGINIA ASSEMBLY, GOVERXOR YEARDLEY PRESIDIXG 



THE BRITISH YOKE 

and was soon forgotten; slavery disappeared also, 
while the self-same social order still subsisted in Vir- 
ginia, though constantly decaying, until a later war 
brought that also to an end. 

There was thus less of social difference among the 
colonies than is often assumed, but the difference in 
municipal institutions was considerable. Every col- 
ony, so far as it was left free to do it, recognized the 
principle of popular government, limiting the suf- 
frage by age, sex, race, or property, but recognizing 
the control of a majority of qualified electors as bind- 
ing. As a rule, this gave a political status to the 
laboring class in the northern colonies, but not in 
those where slavery prevailed and the laboring class 
was of a different race. We naturally do not obtain 
from the books of the period so clear a picture of the 
lower order of inhabitants as of the higher; perhaps 
the liveliest is to be found in the description of Gen- 
eral Riedesel, where he represents the yeomen of New 
England as being thickset, tolerably tall, wearing 
blue frocks girt by a strap, and having their heads 
surmounted by yellow wigs, "with the honorable 
visage of a magistrate beneath" ; as being, moreover, 
rarely able to write ; inquisitive, curious, and zealous 
to madness for liberty. These were the people — as 
seen, be it remembered, through the vexed eyes of a 
defeated prisoner — who made up the citizenship of 
the northern colonies. 

It is certain that the general model for the colonial 
governments, and even for our present State govern- 
ments, dates back to the organization of the Virginia 
House of Burgesses in 1 6 1 9 ; and all the colonies fol- 
lowed the same principle, with some important modi- 
fications. But when it came to the government of 

229 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

small local communities there was a great variation. 
The present system of New England town govern- 
ment had its beginning, according to Professor Joel 
Parker, in the action of the inhabitants of Charles- 
town, Massachusetts, when they adopted, on Feb- 
ruary lo, 1634-35, an order, which still stands on 
the record-book, "for the governm't of the Towne 
by Selectmen," thus giving to eleven persons, "w'^ 
the advice of Pastor and teacher desired in any case 
of conscience," the authority to manage their local 
affairs for one year. Since Professor Parker wrote, 
however, the researches of the Boston Record Com- 
mission have brought to light a similar grant of power 
by the planters of Dorchester (October 8, 1633), au- 
thorizing twelve men "selected of the company" to 
have charge of its affairs. This form of self-govern- 
ment, which could be perfectly combined with the 
existence of slavery on a small scale, was inconsistent 
with a system of great plantations like those in the 
southern colonies ; and it was this fact more than any- 
thing else which developed such difference in char- 
acter as really existed. The other fact that labor was 
held in more respect in the northern colonies than in 
the southern had doubtless something to do with it; 
but, after all, there was then less philosophizing on 
that subject than now, and the main influence was the 
town-meeting. When John Adams was called upon 
by Major Langbourne to explain the difference of 
character between Virginia and New England, Mr. 
Adams offered to give him a receipt for creating a 
New England in Virginia. It consisted of four points : 
" town - meetings, training - days, town schools, and 
ministers." Each colony really based its local insti- 
tutions, in some form, on English traditions; but the 

230 



THE BRITISH YOKE 

system of town government, as it prevailed in the 
eastern colonies, has struck deepest root, and has 
largely influenced the new civilization of the West. 
Thus, with varied preparation, but with a common 
need and an increasing unity, the several colonies ap- 
proached the 19th of April 1775, when the shot was 
fired that was "heard round the world." 



X \ 

THE DAWNING OF INDEPENDENCE 

WHEN France, in 1763, surrendered Canada to 
England, it suddenly opened men's eyes to a 
very astonishing fact. They discovered that British 
iVmerica had at once become a country so large as to 
make England seem ridiculously small. Even the 
cool-headed Dr. Franklin, writing that same year to« 
Mary Stevenson in London, spoke of England as 
"that petty island which, compared to America, is 
but a stepping-stone in a brook, scarce enough of it 
above water to keep one's shoes dry." The far-seeing 
French statesmen of the period looked at the matter 
in the same way. Choiseul, the prime-minister who 
ceded Canada, claimed afterwards that he had done 
it in order to destroy the British nation by creating 
for it a rival. This boast was not made till ten years 
later, and may very likely have been an after-thought, 
but it was destined to be confirmed by the facts. 

We have now to deal with the outbreak of a contest 
which was, according to the greatest of the English 
statesmen of the period, "a most accursed, wicked, 
barbarous, cruel, unnatural, unjust, and diabolical 
war." No American writer ever employed to de- 
scribe it a combination of adjectives so vigorous as 
those here brought together by the elder Pitt, after- 
wards Ivord Chatham. The rights for which Ameri- 

232 



THE DAWNING I-^ I X I) E P E N D E N C E 

cans fought seemed to them to be the common rights 
of Englishmen, and many Englishmen thought the 
same. On the other hand, we are now able to do 
justice to the position of those American loyalists who 
honestly believed that the attempt at independence 
was a mad one, and who sacrificed all they had rath- 
er than rebel against their King. " The annals of the 
world," wrote " Massac huscttensis," the ablest Tory 
pamphleteer in America, "have not been deformed 
with a single instance of so unnatural, so causeless, so 
wanton, so wicked a rebellion." When v/e compare 
this string of epithets employed upon the one side 
with those of Pitt upon the other, we see that the 
war at the outset was not so much a contest of nations 
as of political principles. Some of the ablest men in 
England defended the American cause; some of the 
ablest in the colonies took the loyal side. 

Boston in the winter of 1774-75 was a town of 
some 17,000 inhabitants, garrisoned by some 3000 
British troops. It was the only place in the ]\Iassa- 
chusetts colony where the royal governor exercised 
any real authority and where the laws of Parliament 
had any force. The result was that its life was par- 
alyzed, its people gloomy, and its commerce dead. 
The other colonies were still hoping to obtain their 
rights by policy or by legislation, by refusing to im- 
|jort or to consume, and they watched with constant 
solicitude for some riotous demonstration in Boston. 
On the other hand, the popular leaders in that town 
were taking the greatest pains that there should be 
no outbreak. There was risk of one whenever soldiers 
were sent on any expedition into the country. One 
might have taken place at Marshfield in January ; one 
almost happened at Salem in February; yet still it 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

was postponed. No publicity was given to the pa- 
triotic military organizations in Boston; as little as 
possible was said about the arms and stores that 
were gathered in the country. Not a life had been 
lost in any popular excitement since the Boston Mas- 
sacre in 1770. The responsibility of the first shot, 
the people were determined, must rest upon the royal 
troops. So far was this carried that it was honestly 
attributed by the British soldiers to cowardice alone. 
An officer, quoted by Frothingham, wrote home in 
November, 1774: "As to what you hear of their tak- 
ing arms to resist the force of England, it is mere 
bullying, and will go no farther than words; when- 
ever it comes to blows, he that can run the fastest 
will think himself best off ; believe me, any two regi- 
ments here ought to be decimated if they did not 
beat in the field the whole force of the Massachusetts 
province ; for though they are numerous, they are but 
• a mere mob, without order or discipline, and very 
awkward at handling their arms." 

But whatever may have been the hope of carrying 
their point without fighting, the provincial authori- 
ties were steadily collecting provisions, arms, and 
ammunition. Unhappily these essentials were hard 
to obtain. On April 19, 1775, the committees of 
safety could only count up twelve field -pieces in 
Massachusetts; and there had been collected in that 
colony, 21,549 fire-arms, 17,441 pounds of powder, 
22,191 pounds of ball, 144.699 flints, 10,108 bayonets, 
11,979 pouches, 15,000 canteens. There were also 
17,000 pounds of salt fish, 35,000 pounds of rice, with 
large quantities of beef and pork. Viewed as an evi- 
dence of the forethought of the colonists, these sta- 
tistics are remarkable ; but there was something heroic 

234 



THE DAWNING OF INDEPENDENCE 

and indeed almost pathetic in the project of going to 
war with the British government on the strength of 
twelve field-pieces and seventeen thousand pounds 
of salt fish. 

Yet when, on the night of the i8th of April, 1775, 
Paul Revere rode beneath the bright moonlight 
through Lexington to Concord, with Dawes and 
Prescott for comrades, he was carrying the signal for 
the independence of a nation. He had seen across 
the Charles River the two lights from the church- 
steeple in Boston which were to show that a British 
force was going out to seize the patriotic supplies 
at Concord; he had warned Hancock and Adams at 
Rev. Jonas Clark's parsonage in Lexington, and had 
rejected Sergeant Monroe's caution against unneces- 
sary noise, with the rejoinder, "You'll have noise 
enough here before long — the regulars are coming 
out." As he galloped on his way the regulars were 
advancing with steady step behind him, soon warned 
of their own danger by alarm-bells and signal-guns. 
When Revere was captured by some British officers 
who happened to be near Concord, Colonel Smith, 
the commander of the expedition, had already halt- 
ed, ordered Pitcairn forward, and sent back prudently 
for reinforcements. It was a night of terror to all 
the neighboring Middlesex towns, for no one knew 
what excesses the angry British troops might com- 
mit on their return march. The best picture we have 
of this alarm is in the narrative of a Cambridge wom- 
an, Mrs. Hannah Winthrop, describing "the horrors 
of that midnight cry," as she calls it. The women of 
that town were roused by the beat of drums and ring- 
ing of bells; they hastily gathered their children to- 
gether and fled to the outlying farmhouses; seventy 

235 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

(jr eighty of them were at Fresh Pond, within hear- 
ing of the guns at Menotomy, now Arlington. The 
next day their husbands bade them flee to Andover, 
whither the college property had been sent, and 
thither they went, alternately walking and riding, 
over fields where the bodies of the slain lay unburied!. 
Before 5 a.m. on April 19, 1775, the British troops 
had reached Lexington Green, where thirty -eight 
men, under Captain Parker, stood up before six hun- 
dred or eight hundred to be shot at, their captain say- 
ing: "Don't fire unless you are fired on; but if they 
want a war, let it begin here." It began there; they 
were fired upon ; they fired rather inefTectually in re- 
turn, while seven were killed and nine wounded. 
The rest, after retreating, reformed and pursued the 
British towards Concord, capturing seven stragglers 
— the first prisoners taken in the war. Then fol- 
lowed the fight at Concord, where four hundred and 
fifty Americans, instead of thirty-eight, were rallied 
to meet the British. The fighting took place between 
two detachments at the North Bridge, where 

"once the embattled farmers stood, 
And fired the shot heard round the world." 

There the American captain, Isaac Davis, was killed 
at the first shot — he who had said, when his com- 
pany was placed at the head of the little column, " I 
haven't a man that is afraid to go." He fell, and 
Major Buttrick gave the order, " Fire! for God's sake, 
fire!" in return. The British detachment retreated 
in disorder, but their main body was too strong to be 
attacked, so they disabled a few cannon, destroyed 
some barrels of flour, cut down the liberty-pole, set 
fire to the court-house, and then began their return 

236 




LliXlXGTOX GREEX 
If they want a war, let it begin here. 



THE DAWNING OF I N D E P E N D E N*C E 

march. It ended in a flight ; they were exposed to a 
constant guerilla fire; minute-men flocked behind 
every tree and house; and only the foresight of Col- 
onel Smith in sending for reinforcements averted 
a surrender. At 2 p.m., near Lexington. Percy with 
his troops met the returning fugitives, and formed a 
hollow square, into which they ran and threw them- 
selves on the ground exhausted. Then Percy in turn 
fell back. Militia still came pouring in from Dorches- 
ter, Milton, Dcdham, as well as the nearer towns. A 
company from Danvers marched sixteen miles in four 
hours. The Americans lost ninety-three in killed, 
wounded, and missing that day; the British, two 
hundred and seventy- three. But the important re- 
sult was that every American colony now recognized 
that war had begun. 

How men's minds were aft'ected may best be seen 
by a glimpse at a day in the life of one leading pa- 
triot. Early on the morning of the 19th of April, 
1775, a messenger came hastily to the door of Dr. 
Joseph Warren, physician, in Boston, and chairman 
of the Boston Committee of Safety, with the news 
that there had been fighting at Lexington and Con- 
cord. Dr. Warren, doing first the duty that came 
nearest, summoned his pupil, Mr. Eustis, and direct- 
ed him to take care of his patients for that day; 
then mounted his horse and rode to the Charlestown 
Ferry. As he entered the boat he remarked to an 
acquaintance: "Keep up a brave heart. They have 
begun it — that either party can do; and we'll end it 
— that only we can do." After landing in Charles- 
town he met a certain Dr. Welch, who says, in a 
manuscript statement: " Eight o'clock in the morning 
saw Dr. Joseph Warren just come out of Boston, 

237 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

horseback. I said, 'Well, they are gone out.' 'Yes,' 
he said, ' and we will be up with them before night.' " 
Apparently the two physicians jogged on together, 
tried to pass Lord Percy's column of reinforcements, 
but were stopped by bayonets. Then Dr. Welch 
went home, and Dr. Warren probably attended a 
meeting of the Committee of Safety, held "at the 
Black Horse in Menotomy," or West Cambridge. 
This committee had authority from the Provincial 
Congress to order out the militia, and General Heath, 
who was a member of the committee, rode to take 
command of the provincials, with Warren by his side, 
who was sufficiently exposed that day to have a 
musket-ball strike the pin out of the hair of his ear- 
lock. The two continued together till the British 
army had crossed Charlestown Neck on its retreat, 
and made a stand on Bunker Hill. There they were 
covered by the ships. The militia were ordered to 
pursue no further, and General Heath held the first 
council of war of the Revolution at the foot of Pros- 
pect Hill. 

With the fervor of that day's experience upon him 
Warren wrote, on the day following, this circular to 
the town in behalf of the Committee of Safety. The 
original still exists in the Massachusetts archives, 
marked with much interlineation. 

"Gentlemen, — The barbarous murders committed on our 
innocent brethren on Wednesday, the 19th instant, have 
made it absolutely necessary that we immediately raise an 
army to defend our wives and our children from the butch- 
ering hands of an inhuman soldiery, who. incensed at the 
obstacles they met with in their bloody progress, and enraged 
at being repulsed from the field of slaughter, will without 
the least doubt take the first opportunity in their power to 
ravage this devoted country with fire and sword. We con- 

238 



THE DAWNING OF INDEPENDENCE 

jure you, therefore, by all that is dear, by all that is sacred, 
that you give all assistance possible in forming an army. 
Our all is at stake. Death and devastation are the instant 
consequences of delay. Every moment is infinitely pre- 
cious. An hour lost may deluge your country in blood and 
entail perpetual slavery upon the few of your posterity who 
may survive the carnage. We beg and entreat, as you will 
answer to your country, to your own consciences, and, 
above all, as you will answer to God himself, that you will 
hasten and encourage by all possible means the enlistment 
of men to form the army, and send them forward to head- 
quarters at Cambridge with that expedition which the vast 
importance and instant urgency of the affair demand." 

It is always hard to interpret the precise condition 
of public feeling just before a war. It is plain that 
the Massachusetts committee expected something 
more than a contest of words when they made so 
many preparations. On the other hand, it is evi- 
dent that hardly any one looked forward to any serious 
and prolonged strife. Dr. Warren wrote, soon after 
the 19th of April: "The people never seemed in ear- 
nest about the matter until after the engagement of 
the 19th ult., and I verily believe that the night 
preceding the barbarous outrages committed by the 
soldiery at Lexington, Concord, etc., there were not 
fifty people in the whole colony that ever expected 
any blood would be shed in the contest between us 
and Great Britain." Yet two days after the fight at 
Lexington the Massachusetts Committee of Safety 
resolved to enlist eight thousand men. Two days after 
that the news reached New York at noon. There 
was a popular outbreak; the royal troops were dis- 
armed, the fort and magazines seized, and two trans- 
ports for Boston unloaded. At five on Monday after- 
noon the tidings reached Philadelphia, when the bell 

239 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

in Independence Hall was rung and the people gath- 
ered in numbers. When it got so far as Charleston, 
South Carolina, the people seized the arsenal and the 
Provincial Congress proclaimed them ' ' ready to sac- 
rifice their lives and fortunes." In Savannah, Geor- 
gia, a mob took possession of the powder-magazine 
and raised a liberty-pole. In Kentucky a party of 
hunters, hearing of the battle, gave their encamp- 
ment the name of Lexington, which it still bears; 
and thus the news went on. 

Meanwhile, on May loth, the Continental Congress 
convened, and on the same day Ethan Allen took 
possession of the strong fortress of Ticonderoga. It 
was the first act of positive aggression by the pa- 
triotic party, for at both Lexington and Concord they 
were acting on the defensive. The expedition was 
planned in Connecticut and reinforced in western 
Massachusetts, but the nlain reliance was to be 
placed on Ethan Allen and his "Green Mountain 
Boys," whose daring and energy were already well 
known. Benedict Arnold, who had been commis- 
sioned in Massachusetts for the same purpose, ar- 
rived only in time to join the expedition as a vol- 
unteer. On May lo, 1775, eighty- three men crossed 
the lake with Allen. When they had landed, he 
warned them that it was a dangerous enterprise, 
and called for volunteers. Every man volunteered. 
The rest took but a few moments. They entered 
with a war-whoop the open wicket-gate, pressing by 
the sentinel, and when the half -clad commander ap- 
]jeared and asked their authority, Allen answered 
with the words that have become historic, "In the 
name of the great Jehovah and the Continental Con- 
gress." The Congress was only to meet that day, 

240 



THE DAWNING OF INDEPENDENCE 

but it appeared already to be exercising a sort of ante- 
natal authority ; and a fortress which had cost eight 
million pounds sterling and many lives was placed in 
its hands by a mere stroke of boldness. Crown Point 
gave itself up with equal ease to Seth Warner, and 
another dramatic surprise was given to the new-born 
nation. 

In the neighborhood of Boston the month of May 
was devoted to additional preparations, and to what 
are called, in the old stage directions of Shakespeare's 
plays, " alarums and excursions." At one time, when 
a sally from Boston was expected, the Committee of 
Safety ordered the officers of the ten nearest towns 
to assemble one-half the militia and all the minute- 
men and march to Roxbury. While this was being 
done, General Thomas, with an ingenuity quite in 
the style of the above stage motto, marched his seven 
hundred men round and round a high hill, visible 
from Boston, to mislead the British. At another 
time, when men were more numerous. General Put- 
nam marched all the troops in Cambridge, twenty- 
two hundred in number, to Charlestown Ferry, the 
column being spread over a mile and a half, and pass- 
ing under the guns of the British without attack. At 
another time, "all of Weymouth, Braintree, and 
Hingham," according to Mrs. Adams, turned out to 
drive away a British detachment from Grape Island, 
where the Americans then landed, burned a quantity 
of hay, and brought away cattle. A larger skirmish 
took place at Noddle's Island, near East Boston, 
where the Americans destroyed a schooner, dis- 
mantled a sloop, and captured twelve swivels and 
four 4 -pound cannon. Putnam commanded in 
this engagement, and the enthusiasm which it 
i6 241 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

called out secured his unanimous election as major- 
general. 

Meantime the Provincial troops were gathering for 
what the Essex Gazette of June 8th called, with rath- 
er premature admiration, " the grand American army" 
— an army whose returns for June 9th showed 7644 
men. " Nothing could be in a more confused state," 
wrote Dr. Eliot, " than the army which first assembled 
at Cambridge. This tmdisciplined body of men were 
kept together by a few who deserved well of their 
country." President John Adams, writing long after 
(Jime 19, 18 18), thus summed up the condition of 
these forces: 

"The army at Cambridge was not a national army, for 
there was no nation. It was not a United States army, for 
there were no United States. It was not an army of united 
colonies, for it could not be said in any sense that the col- 
onies were united. The centre of their union, the Congress 
of Philadelphia, had not adopted nor acknowledged the 
army at Cambridge. It was not a New England army, for 
New England had not associated. New England had no 
legal legislature, nor any common executive authority, even 
upon the principles of original authority, or even of original 
power in the people. Massachusetts had her army, Connect- 
icut her army. New Hampshire her army, and Rhode Isl- 
and her army. These four armies met at Cambridge, and 
imprisoned the British army in Boston. But who was the 
sovereign of this united, or rather congregated, army, and 
who its commander-in-chief'? It had none. Putnam, Poor, 
and Greene were as independent of Ward as Ward was of 
them." 

This was the state of the forces outside, while the 
army inside was impatiently waiting for reinforce- 
ments and chafing at the ignoble delay. On May 
25th three British generals (Howe, Clinton, and Bur- 

242 



THE DAWNING OF INDEPENDENCE 

goyne) arrived with troops. The newspapers of the 
day say that when these officers were going into 
Boston Harbor they met a packet coming out, when 
General Burgoyne asked the skipper of the packet 
what news there was. And being told that the town 
was surrounded by ten thousand country people, 
asked how many regulars there were in Boston; and 
being answered, "About five thousand," cried out, 
with astonishment : ' ' What ! and ten thousand peas- 
ants keep five thousand king's troops shut up! Well, 
let us get in, and we'll soon find elbow-room." After 
this conversation the nickname of " Elbow-room" was 
permanently fastened on General Burgoyne. He 
used to relate that after his reverses, while a prisoner 
of war, he was received with great courtesy by the 
people of Boston as he stepped from the Charlestown 
ferry-boat, but was a little annoyed when an old lady, 
perched on a shed above the crowd, cried out, in a 
shrill voice: "Make way! make way! The general's 
coming. Give him elbow-room." 

Two days before the battle of Bunker Hill, Mrs. 
Adams wrote to her husband, John Adams: "Gage's 
proclamation you will receive by this conveyance, 
and the records of time cannot produce a blacker 
page. Satan when driven from the realms of bliss 
exhibited not more malice. Surely the father of lies 
is superseded. Yet we think it the best proclamation 
he could have issued." This proclamation announced 
martial law, but offered pardon to those who would 
give in their allegiance to the government, "except- 
ing only from the benefit of such pardon Samuel 
Adams and John Hancock, whose offences are of too 
flagitious a nature to admit of any other considera- 
tion than that of condign punishment." He after- 

243 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

wards remarked that the rebels added ' ' insult to out- 
rage," as, "with a preposterous parade of military ar- 
rangement, they affected to hold the army besieged." 

Two things contributed to bring about the battle 
of Bunker Hill: the impatience of British troops un- 
der the "affectation" of a siege; on the other hand, 
the great increase of self-confidence among the pro- 
vincials after Lexington and Concord. It was a 
military necessity, no doubt, for each side, to occupy 
the Charlestown heights; but there was also a grow- 
ing disposition to bring matters to a crisis on the first 
favorable opportunity. Captain (afterwards Lord) 
Harris wrote home to England (June 12 th) : " I wish 
the Americans may be brought to a sense of their 
duty. One good drubbing, which I long to give them 
by way of retaliation, might have a good effect tow- 
ards it." Dr. Warren, on the other hand, wrote (May 
1 6th) that if General Gage would only make a sally 
from Boston, he would "gratify thousands who im- 
patiently wait to avenge the blood of their murdered 
countrymen." With such dispositions on both sides, 
the collision could not be far oft'. Kinglake says that 
the reasons for a battle rarely seem conclusive except 
to a general who has some positive taste for fighting. 
Had not something of this impulse existed on both 
sides in 1775, the American rebels would probably 
not have fortified Bunker Hill, or the English general 
might have besieged and starved them out without 
firing a shot. 

It is needless to add another to the innumerable 
descriptions of the battle of Bunker Hill. Every 
Englishman who comes to America feels renewed 
astonishment that a monument should have been 
built on the scene of a defeat. Every American 

244 



THE DAWNING OF INDEPENDENCE 

school-boy understands that the monument celebrates 
a fact more important than most victories — namely, 
that the raw provincials faced the British army for 
two hours, they themselves being under so little or- 
ganization that it is impcjssible to tell even at this 
day who was their commander; that they did this 
with only the protection of an unfinished earthwork 
and a rail fence, retreating only when their powder 
was out. Tried by the standards of regular warfare 
even at that day, a breastwork twice that of Bunker 
Hill would have been acct)unted but a moderate ob- 
stacle. When in the previou-s century the frightened 
citizens of Dorchester, England, had asked a military 
engineer whether their breastworks could resist Prince 
Rupert's soldiers, he answered: "I have seen them 
running up walls twenty feet high; these defences of 
yours may possibly keep them out half an hour." 
The flimsy defences of Bunker Hill kept back Gen- 
eral Howe's soldiers for two hours and until the un- 
tried provincials had fired their last shot. It was a 
fact worth a monument. 

The best descriptions of the battle itself are to be 
•found in the letters of provincial officers and soldiers 
preserved in the appendix to Richard Frothingham's 
Siege of Boston. It is the descriptions of raw soldiers 
that are always most graphic ; as they grow more fa- 
miliar with war, their narratives grow tame. It is 
a sufficient proof of the impression made in England 
by the affair that the newspapers of that nation, in- 
stead of being exultant, were indignant or apologetic, 
and each had its own theory in regard to "the in- 
numerable errors of that day," as the London Chron- 
icle called them. Tried by this test of contemporary 
criticism, the Americans do not seem to have exag- 

245 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

gerated the real importance of the event. "The 
ministerial troops gained the hill," wrote William 
Tudor to John Adams, "but were victorious losers. 
A few more such victories, and they are undone." 
By the official accounts these troops lost in killed and 
wounded 1054 — about one in four of their number, 
including an unusually large proportion of officers ; 
while the Americans lost but half as many, about 450, 
out of a total of from two to three thousand. But 
the numbers were nothing; the fact that the pro- 
vincials had resisted regular troops was everything. 

The "great American army" was still growing at 
Cambridge; it had been adopted by Congress, even 
before the battle, and George Washington, of Virginia, 
had been unanimously placed in command, by rec- 
ommendation of the New England delegates. He as- 
sumed this authority beneath the historic elm-tree at 
Cambridge, July 3, 1775. On the 9th he held a coun- 
cil of war of the newly organized general officers. 
The whole force was still from New England, and con- 
sisted of 16,770 infantry and 585 artillerymen. These 
were organized in three divisions, each comprising 
two brigades, usually of six regiments each. They ' 
had a long series of posts to garrison, and they had 
nine rounds of ammunition per man. Worst of all, 
they were still, in the words of Washington, " a 
mixed multitude of people, under very little disci- 
pline." Their whole appearance under the new or- 
ganization may be best seen from the contemporary 
description by the Rev. William Emerson, grand- 
father of our great poet and essayist : 

"There is great overturning in the camp, as to order and 
regularity. New lords, new laws. The Generals Washing- 

246 



THE DAWNING OF INDEPENDENCE 

ton and Lee are upon the lines every day. New orders 
from his Excellency are read to the respective regiments 
every morning after prayers. The strictest government is 
taking place, and great distinction is made between oflficers 
and soldiers. Every one is made to know his place, and 
keep in it, or be tied up and receive thirty or forty lashes, 
according to his crime. Thousands are at work every day 
from four till eleven o'clock in the morning. It is surpris- 
ing how much work has been done. The lines are extended 
almost from Cambridge to Mystic River, so that very soon 
it will be morally impossible for the enemy to get between 
the works, except in one place, which is supposed to be left 
purposely unfortified to entice the enemy out of their for- 
tresses. Who would have thought, twelve months past, 
that all Cambridge and Charlestown would be covered over 
with American camps and cut up into forts and intrench- 
ments, and all the lands, fields, orchards laid common — 
horses and cattle feeding in the choicest mowing land, whole 
fields of corn eaten down to the ground, and large parks of 
well-regulated locusts cut down for firewood and other pub- 
lic uses! This, I must say, looks a little melancholy. My 
quarters are at the foot of the famous Prospect Hill, where 
such great preparations are made for the reception of the 
enemy. It is very diverting to walk among the camps. 
They are as different in their form as the owners are in their 
dress; and every tent is a portraiture of the temper and 
taste of the persons who encamp in it. Some are made of 
boards and some of sail-cloth. Some partly of one and 
some partly of the other. Again, others are made of stone 
and turf, brick or brush. Some are thrown up in a hurry; 
others curiously wrought with doors and windows, done 
with wreaths and withes, in the manner of a basket. Some 
are your proper tents and marquees, looking like the regu- 
lar camp of the enemy. In these are the Rhode-Islanders, 
who are furnished with tent equipage and everything in the 
most exact English style. However, I think this great 
variety is rather a beauty than a blemish in the army." 

All that was experienced on both sides at the be- 
ginning of the late American civil war. in respect to 

247 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

rawness of soldiery, inexperienced officers, short en- 
listments, local jealousies, was equally known in the 
early Continental army, and was less easily remedied. 
Even the four New England colonies that supplied 
the first troops were distrustful of one another and 
of Washington, and this not without some apparent 
reason. In a state of society which, as has been 
shown, was essentially aristocratic, they had sudden- 
ly lost their leaders. Nearly one-third of the com- 
munity, including almost all those to whom social 
deference had been paid, had taken what they called 
the loyal, and others the Tory, side. Why should 
this imported Virginian be more trustworthy ? Wash- 
ington in turn hardly did justice to the material with 
which he had to deal. He found that in Massa- 
chusetts, unlike Virginia, the gentry were loyal to the 
King ; those with whom he had to consult were main- 
ly farmers and mechanics — a class such as hardly 
existed in Virginia, and which was then far rougher 
and less intelligent than the same class now is. They 
were obstinate, suspicious, jealous. They had lost 
their natural leaders, the rich men, the royal council- 
lors, the judges, and had to take up with new and 
improvised guides — physicians like Warren — "Doc- 
tor-general" Warren, as the British officers called him 
—or skilled mechanics like Paul Revere, or unem- 
ployed lawyers and business men like those w-hom 
Governor Shirley described as " that brace of Adams- 
es." The few men of property and consequence who 
stood by them, as Hancock and Prescott, were the 
exceptions.' There were few on the patriotic side of 
whom it could be said, as Hutchinson said of Oxen- 
bridge Thacher, "He was not born a plebeian, but 
he was resolved to die one." Their line officers were 

248 



THE DA W N I X G OF I X D E P E X D E X C E 

men taken almost at random from among themselves, 
sometimes turning out admirably, sometimes shame- 
fully. Washington cashiered a colonel and five cap- 
tains for cowardice or dishonesty during the first 
summer. The Continental anny as it first assembled 
in Cambridge was, as was said of another army on a 
later occasion, an aggregation of town-meetings, and, 
which is worse, of town-meetings from which all the 
accustomed leaders had suddenly been swept away. 
No historian has yet fully portrayed the extent to 
which this social revolution in New England embar- 
rassed all the early period of the war, or has shown 
how it made the early Continental troops chafe under 
Washington and Schuyler, and prefer in their secret 
souls to be led by General Putnam, whom they could 
call "Old Put," and who rode to battle in his shirt- 
sleeves. 

And, on the other hand, we can now see that there 
was some foundation for these criticisms on Wash- 
ington. With the highest principle and the firmest 
purpose, his views of military government were such 
as no American army in these days would endure for 
a month. His methods were simply despotic. He 
thought that the Massachusetts Provincial Legislat- 
ure should impress men into the Revolutionary 
army, should provide them with food and clothes 
only, not with pay, and should do nothing for their 
families. He himself, having declined the offered 
$500 per month, served his country for Ms expenses 
only, and so, he thought, should they, overlooking 
the difference between those whose households de- 
pended only on themselves and those who, like him- 
self, had left slaves at work on their broad planta- 
tions. He thought that officers and men should be 

249 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

taken from different social classes, that officers should 
have power almost absolute, and that camp offences 
should be punished by the lash. These imperial 
methods produced a good effect, on the whole ; prob- 
ably it was best that the general should err on one 
side if the anny erred on the other. But there is no 
doubt that much of the discontent, the desertion, the 
uncertain enlistments of the next two years pro- 
ceeded from the difficulty found by Washington in 
adapting himself to the actual condition of the peo- 
ple, especially the New England people. It is the 
highest proof of his superiority that he overcame not 
merely all other obstacles, but even his own mistakes. 
Such as it was, the army remained in camp long 
enough to make everybody impatient. The delay 
was inevitable; it was easier to provide even disci- 
pline than powder ; the troops kept going and coming 
because of short enlistments, and more than once the 
whole force was reduced to ten thousand men. With 
that patience which was one of Washington's strong- 
est military qualities he withstood dissatisfaction 
within and criticism from without until the time 
had come to strike a heavier blow. Then, in a single 
night, he fortified Dorchester Heights, and this forced 
the evacuation of Boston. The British generals had 
to seek elbow-room elsewhere. They left Boston 
March 17, 1776, taking with them twelve hundred 
American loyalists, the bulk of what called itself " so- 
ciety" in New England. The navy went to Halifax, 
the army to New York, whither Washington soon 
took his Continental army also. Once there, he 
found new obstacles. From the very fact that they 
had not sent away their loyalists, there was less of 
unanimity among the New York people, nor had they 

250 



THE DAWNING OF INDEPENDENCE 

been so well trained by the French and Indian wars. 
The New England army was now away from home; 
it was unused to marches or evolutions, but it had 
learned some confidence in itself and in its command- 
er, though it did not always do credit to either. It 
was soon reinforced by troops from the Middle States, 
but a period of disaster followed, which severely test- 
ed the generalship of Washington. He no longer had, 
as in Massachusetts, all the loyalists shut up in the 
opposing camp ; he found them scattered through the 
community. Long Island was one of their strong- 
holds, and received the Continental army much less 
cordially than the British army was received at Staten 
Island. The Hudson River was debatable ground 
between opposing factions; Washington's own mili- 
tary family held incipient traitors. The outlook was 
not agreeable in any direction, at least in the north- 
ern colonies, where the chief contest lay. 

There was a disastrous advance into Canada, under 
Montgomery and Arnold, culminating in the defeat 
before Quebec, December 30. 1775. and the retreat 
conducted the next spring by Thomas and Sullivan. 
It was clearly a military repulse, but it was a great 
comfort to John Adams, -looking from the remoteness 
of Philadelphia, to attribute all to a quite subordi- 
nate cause. "Our misfortunes in Canada," he wrote 
to his wife, June 26, 1776, "are enough to melt a 
heart of stone. The small-pox is ten times more ter- 
rible than Britons, Canadians, and Indians together. 
This was the cause of our precipitate retreat from 
Quebec." Thus was disappointment slightly miti- 
gated; but in the Carolinas, about the same time, it 
was the British who were disappointed, and the de- 
fence of Fort Moultrie especially gave comfort to all 

251 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

the patriotic party. It was a brilliant achievement, 
where the fate of Charleston and the Carolinas was 
determined by the defence of a fortress of palmetto 
logs, manned by less than five hundred men, under 
Moultrie, aided by Motte, Marion, and the since-re- 
nowned Sergeant Jasper. They had thirty-one can- 
non, but only a scanty supply of powder. Over them 
waved a flag of blue, with a crescent inscribed " Lib- 
erty." Against them was a squadron of British ships, 
some of them carrying fifty guns ; and they defended 
themselves so successfully for ten hours that the 
British invasion was checked and then abandoned. 
This happened on June 28, 1776, just in time to coun- 
teract the discouragement that came from the fatal 
Canadian campaign. 

The encouragement was needed. Just before the 
time when the Continental Congress had begun its 
preliminary work on the great Declaration, General 
Joseph Reed, the newly appointed adjutant-general, 
and one of Washington's most trusted associates, was 
writing thus from the field : 

"With an army of force before, and a secret one behind, 
we stand on a point of land with six thousand old troops, 
if a year's service of about half can entitle them to this 
name, and about fifteen hundred raw levies of the province, 
many disaffected and more doubtful. Every man, from 
the general to the private, acquainted with our true situa- 
tion, is exceedingly discouraged. Had I known the true 
posture of affairs, no consideration would have tempted mc- 
to take part in this scene; and this sentiment is universal." 



XI 
THE DECLARATION 

IN the days of the Continental Congress the dele- 
gates used to travel to the capital, at the begin- 
ning of each session, from their several homes, usually 
on horseback; fording streams, sleeping at miserable 
country inns, sometimes weather-bound for days, 
sometimes making circuits to avoid threatened dan- 
gers, sometimes accomplishing forced marches to 
reach Philadelphia in time for some special vote. 
There lie before me the unpublished papers of one 
of the signers of the great Declaration, and these 
papers comprise the diaries of several such journeys. 
Their simple records rarely include bursts of patriot- 
ism or predictions of national glory, but they contain 
many plaintive chronicles of bad beds and worse 
food, mingled with pleasant glimpses of wayside chat, 
and now and then a bit of character-painting that 
recalls the jovial narratives of Fielding. Sometimes 
they give a passing rumor of "the glorious news of 
the surrendering of the Colonel of the Queen's Dra- 
goons with his whole army," but more commonly 
they celebrate "milk toddy and bread and butter" 
after a wetting, or " the best dish of Bohea tea I have 
drank for a twelve month." When they arrived at 
Philadelphia, the delegates put up their horses, 
changed their riding gear for those garments which 

253 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

Trumbull has immortalized, and gathered to Inde- 
pendence Hall to greet their brother delegates, to 
interchange the gossip of the day, to repeat Dr. 
Franklin's last anecdote or Francis Hopkinson's last 
joke; then proceeding, when the business of the day- 
was opened, to lay the foundation for a new nation. 

"Before the 19th of April, 1775," said Jefferson, 
" I had never heard a whisper of a disposition to sepa- 
rate from the mother-country." Washington said: 
"When I first took command of the army" — (July 3, 
1775) — " I abhorred the idea of independence; but I 
am now fully convinced that nothing else will save 
us." It is only by dwelling on such words as these 
that we can measure that vast educational process 
which brought the American people to the Declara- 
tion of Independence in 1776. 

The Continental Congress, in the earlier months of 
that year, had for many days been steadily drifting 
on towards the distinct assertion of separate sover- 
eignty, and had declared it irreconcilable with reason 
and a good conscience for the colonists to take the 
oath required for the support of the government un- 
der the crown of Great Britain. But it was not till 
the 7th of June that Richard Henry Lee, of Virginia, 
rose and read these resolutions: 

" That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, 
free and independent States; that they are absolved from all 
allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connec- 
tion between them and the State of Great Britain is, and 
ought to be, totally dissolved. 

" That it is expedient forthwith to take the most effectual 
■measures for forming foreign alliances. 

" That a plan of confederation be prepared and transmitted 
to the respective colonies for their consideration and appro- 
bation." 

254 



THE DECLARATION 

These resolutions were presented under direct in- 
structions from the Virginia Assembly, the delegates 
from that colony selecting Mr. Lee as their spokes- 
man. They were at once seconded, probably after 
previous understanding, by John Adams, of Massa- 
chusetts — Virginia and Massachusetts being then the 
leading colonies. It was a bold act, for it was still 
doubtful whether anything better than a degrading 
death would await these leaders if uiisuccessful. Gage 
had written, only the year before, of the prisoners 
left in his hands at Bunker Hill, that " their lives were 
destined to the cord." Indeed, the story runs that a 
similar threat was almost as frankly made to the son 
of Mr. Lee, then a school-boy in England. He was 
one day standing near one of his teachers, when some 
visitor asked the question, " What boy is that ?" " He 
is the son of Richard Henry Lee, of America," the 
teacher replied. On this the visitor put his hand on 
the boy's head and said, "We shall yet see your 
father's head upon Tower Hill" — to which the boy 
answered, "You may have it when you can get it." 
This was the way in which the danger was regarded 
in England ; and we know that Congress directed the 
secretary to omit from the journals, for safety, the 
names of the mover and seconder of these resolutions. 
The record only says: "Certain resolutions respect- 
ing independence being moved and seconded. Re- 
solved, That the consideration of them be deferred 
until to-morrow morning; and that the members be 
enjoined to attend punctually at ten o'clock, in order 
to take the same into their consideration." 

On the next day the discussion came up promptly, 
and was continued through Saturday, June 8th, and 
on Monday, June loth. The resolutions were op- 

255 



HISTORY OF T H P: UNITED S T /V T E S 

posed, even with bitterness, by Robert R. Livingston, 
of New York, by Dickinson and Wilson, of Pennsyl- 
vania, and by Rutledge, of South Carolina. The 
latter is reported to have said privately, "that it 
required the impudence of a New-Englander for them 
in their disjointed state to propose a treaty to a 
nation now at peace ; that no reason could be assigned 
for pressing into this measure but the reason of every 
madman, a show "of spirit." On the other hand, the 
impudence, if such it was of John Adams went so 
far as to defend the resolutions, as stating "objects 
of the most stupendous magnitude, in which the lives 
and liberties of millions yet unborn were intimately 
interested"; as belonging to "a revolution the most 
complete, unexpected, and remarkable of any in the 
history of nations." On Monday the resolutions 
were postponed, by a vote of seven colonies against 
five, until that day three weeks; and it was after- 
wards voted (June nth), "in the meanwhile, that 
no time be lost, in case Congress agree thereto, that 
a committee be appointed to prepare a declaration 
to that effect." Of this committee Mr. Lee would 
doubtless have been the chairman, had he not been 
already on his way to Virginia to attend the sick-bed 
of his wife. His associate, Thomas Jefferson, was 
named in his place, together with John Adams, of 
Massachusetts, Benjamin Franklin, of Pennsylvania, 
Roger Sherman, of Connecticut, and Robert R. Liv- 
ingston, of New York. 

This provided for the Declaration; and on the ap- 
pointed day, July i, 1776, Congress proceeded to the 
discussion of the momentous resolutions. Little re- 
mains to us of the debate, and the best glimpse of the 
opening situation is afforded to the modern reader 

256 



THE DECLARATION 

through a letter written by Mr. Adams to Mercy War- 
ren, the historian — a letter dated "Quincy, 1807," 
but not printed until 1872, when it was inserted by 
Frothingham in the appendix to his invaluable Rise 
of the Republic of the United States. The important 
passage is as follows: 

' ' I remember very well what I did say ; but I will previous- 
ly state a fact as it lies in my memory, which may be some- 
what explanatory of it. In the previous multiplied debates 
which we had upon the subject of independence, the dele- 
gates from New Jersey had voted against us; their constitu- 
ents were informed of it and recalled them, and sent us a 
new set on purpose to vote for independence. Among these 
were Chief-justice Stockton and Dr. Witherspoon. In a 
morning when Congress met, we expected the question would 
be put and carried without any further debate; because we 
knew we had a majority, and thought that argument had 
been exhausted on both sides, as indeed it was, for nothing 
new was ever afterwards advanced on either side. But the 
Jersey delegates, appearing for the first time, desired that 
the question might be discussed. We observed to them 
that the question was so public, and had been so long dis- 
cussed in pamphlets, newspapers, and at every fireside, that 
they could not be uninformed, and must have made up 
their minds. They said it was true they had not been in- 
attentive to what had been passing abroad, but they had 
not heard the arguments in Congress, and did not incline to 
give their opinions until they should hear the sentiments of 
members there. Judge Stockton was most particularly im- 
portunate till the members began to say, 'Let the gentle- 
men be gratified,' and the eyes of the assembly were turned 
upon me, and several of them said, 'Come, Mr. Adams; you 
have had the subject longer at heart than any of us, and 
you must recapitulate the arguments.' I was somewhat 
confused at this personal application to me, and would have 
been very glad to be excused; but as no other person rose, 
after some time I said, 'This is the first time in my life when 
I seriously wished for the genius and eloquence of the cele- 
brated orators of Athens and Rome: called in this unex- 
x7 257 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

pected and unprepared manner to exhibit all the arguments 
in favor of a measure the most important, in my judgment, 
that had ever been discussed in civil or political society, I 
had no art or oratory to exhibit, and could produce nothing 
but simple reason and plain common-sense. I felt myself 
oppressed by the weight of the subject, and I believed if 
Demosthenes or Cicero had ever been called to deliberate 
on so great a question, neither would have relied on his own 
talents without a supplication to Minerva and a sacrifice to 
Mercury or the God of Eloquence.' All this, to be sure, was 
but a flourish, and not, as I conceive, a very bright exordium; 
but I felt awkwardly. . . . 

"I wish some one had remembered the speech, for it is 
almost the only one I ever made that I wish was literally 
preserved." 

"John Adams," said Jefferson, long afterwards, to 
Daniel Webster and George Ticknor, ' ' was our Colos- 
sus on the floor. He was not graceful, nor elegant, 
nor remarkably fluent, but he came out occasionally 
with a power of thought and expression that moved 
us from our seats." It seems a pity that no adequate 
specimens remain to us of this straightforward elo- 
quence ; and yet it is cause for congratulation, on the 
whole, that the only speech fully written out after 
that debate was the leading argument for the nega- 
tive. Long years have made us familiar with the 
considerations that led to national independence ; the 
thing of interest is to know what was said against it ; 
and this is just what we happen to know through the 
record of a single speech. 

After any great measure has been carried through, 
men speedily forget the objections and the objectors, 
and in a hundred years can hardly beHeve that any 
serious opposition was ever made. Little as the 
writings of John Dickinson are now read, up to the 
year 1775 he had douj^tless contributed more than 

2c;8 



THE DECLARATION 

any one man, except Thomas Paine, to the political 
emancipation, so far as the press could effect it, of 
the American people. The Farmer's Letters had been 
reprinted in London with a preface by Dr. Franklin ; 
they had been translated into French, and they had 
been more widely read in America tfian any patriotic 
pamphlet, excepting only the "Common SInse" of 
Paine. Yet their author had to meet criticism and 
neglect because he shrank at the last moment before 
the storm he had aroused. Who can deny the 
attribute of moral courage to the man who stood 
up in the Continental Congress to argue against 
independence? But John Adams reports that Dick- 
inson's mother used to say to him:" Johnny, you will 
Ije hanged ; your estate will be forfeited or confiscated ; 
you will leave your excellent wife a widow," and so 
on; and Adams admits that if his wife and mother 
had used such language, it would have made him 
miserable at least. And it was under this restrain- 
ing influence, so unlike the fearless counsels of Abby 
Adams, that Dickinson rose on that first of July and 
spoke thus: 

' ' I value the love of my country as I ought, but I value 
my country more; and I desire this illustrious assembly to 
witness the integrity, if not the policy, of my conduct. The 
first campaign will be decisive of the controversy. The 
Declaration will not strengthen us by one man, or by the 
least supply, while it may expose our soldiers to additional 
cruelties and outrages. Without some prelusory trials of 
our strength, we ought not to commit our country upon an 
alternative, where to recede would be infamy and to per- 
sist might be destruction. 

"No instance is recollected of a people, without a battle 
fought or an ally gained, abrogating forever their connec- 
tion with a warlike commercial empire. It might unite the 

259 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

different parties in Great Britain against us, and it might 
create disunion among ourselves. 

"With other powers it would rather injure than avail us. 
Foreign aid will not be obtained but by our actions in the 
field, which are the only evidences of our union and vigor 
that will be respected. In the war between the United 
Provinces and Spain, France and England assisted the prov- 
inces before they declared themselves independent; if it is 
the interest of any European kingdom to aid us, we shall 
be aided without such a declaration; if it is not, we shall 
not be aided with it. Before such an irrevocable step shall 
be taken, we ought to know the disposition of the great 
powers, and how far they will permit one or more of them 
to interfere. The erection of an independent empire on this 
continent is a phenomenon in the world; its effects will be 
immense, and may vibrate round the globe. How they may 
affect, or be supposed to affect, old establishments is not 
ascertained. It is singularly disrespectful to France to 
make the Declaration before her sense is known, as we have 
sent an agent expressly to inquire whether such a Declara- 
tion would be acceptable to her, and we have reason to be- 
lieve he is now arrived at the Court of Versailles. The meas- 
ure ought to be delayed till the common interests shall in 
the best manner be consulted by common consent. Be- 
sides, the door to accommodation with Great Britain ought 
not to be shut, until we know what terms can be obtained 
from some competent power. Thus to break with her be- 
fore we have compacted with another is to make experi- 
ments on the lives and liberties of my countrymen, which 
I would sooner die than agree to make. At best, it is to 
throw us into the hands of some other power and to lie at 
mercy, for we shall have passed the river that is never to 
be repassed. We ought to retain the Declaration and re- 
main masters of our own fame and fate." 



These were the opinions of the "Pennsylvania 
Farmer," as condensed by Bancroft from Mr. Dick- 
inson's own report, no words being employed but 
those of the orator. In the field some of the bravest 

260 



THE DECLARATION 

men were filled with similar anxieties. The letter, 
already quoted, from the new adjutant-general, 
Joseph Reed, describing the military situation, was 
not laid before the Congress indeed, but one from 
General Washington, giving essentially the same 
facts, was read at the opening of that day's session. 
In spite of this mournful beginning, and notwith- 
standing the arguments of Mr. Dickinson, the pur- 
pose of the majority in the legislative body was clear 
and strong ; and the pressure from their constituencies 
was yet stronger. Nearly every colony had already 
taken separate action towards independence, and on 
that first day of July the Continental Congress adopt- 
ed, in committee, the first resolution offered by the 
Virginia delegates. There were nine colonies in the 
affirmative, Pennsylvania and South Carolina voting 
in the negative, the latter unanimously, Delaware 
being divided, and New York not voting, the dele- 
gates from that colony favoring the measure, but 
having as yet no instructions. 

When the resolutions came up for final action in 
convention the next day, the state of things had 
changed. Dickinson and Morris, of Pennsylvania, 
had absented themselves and left an affirmative ma- 
jority in the delegation ; Caesar Rodney had returned 
from an absence and brought Delaware into line ; and 
South Carolina, though still disapproving the resolu- 
tions, joined in the vote for the sake of unanimity, as 
had been half promised by Edward Rutledge the day 
before. Thus twelve colonies united in the momen- 
tous action ; and New York, though not voting, yet 
endorsed it through a State convention within a 
week. The best outburst of contemporary feeling over 
the great event is to be found in a letter by John 

261 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

Adams to his wife, dated July 3, 1 776. He writes as 
follows : 

"Yesterday the greatest question was decided which ever 
was debated in America, and a greater, perhaps, never was 
nor will be decided among men. . . . When I look back to 
1 761, . . . and recollect the series of political events, the 
chain of causes and efifects, I am surprised at the sudden- 
ness as well as greatness of this revolution. Britain has 
been filled with folly and America with wisdom. ... It is 
the will of Heaven that the two countries should be sun- 
dered forever. It may be the will of Heaven that America 
shall suffer calamities still more wasting and distresses yet 
more dreadful. . . . But I submit all my hopes and fears to 
an overruling Providence, in which, unfashionable as the 
faith may be, I firmly believe. . . . 

"The second day of July, 1776, will be the most memor- 
able epocha in the history of America. I am apt to believe 
that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the 
great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated 
as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God 
Almighty, . . . from one end of the continent to the other, 
from this time forward for evermore. 

"You will think me transported with enthusiasm, but I 
am not. I am well aware of the toil and blood and treasure 
that it will cost us to maintain this declaration and sup- 
port and defend these States. Yet, through all the gloom, 
I can see the rays of ravishing light and glory; I can see 
that the end is worth all the means. And that posterity 
will triumph in that day's transaction, even though we 
should rue it, which I trust to God we shall not." 

John Adams was mistaken in one prediction. It 
is the Fourth of July, not the Second, which has been 
accepted by Americans as "the most memorable 
epocha." This is one of the many illustrations of the 
fact that words as well as deeds are needful, since a 
great act may seem incomplete until it has been put 
into a fitting form of words. It was the vote of July 

262 



THE DECLARATION 

2d that changed the thirteen colonies into indepen- 
dent States; the Declaration of Independence only 
promulgated the fact and assigned its reasons. Had 
tliis great proclamation turned out to be a confused 
or ill-written document, it would never have eclipsed 
in fame the original Resolution, which certainly had 
no such weak side. But this danger was well averted, 
for the Declaration was to be drawn up by Jefferson, 
unsurpassed in his time for power of expression. He 
accordingly framed it ; Franklin and Adams suggested 
a few verbal amendments; Sherman and Livingston 
had none to offer; and the document stood ready to 
be reported to the Congress. 

Some of those who visit Philadelphia may feel an 
interest in knowing that the " title-deed of our liber- 
ties," as Webster called it, was written in "a new 
brick house out in the fields" — a house standing 
at the southwest corner of Market and Seventh 
streets, less than a quarter of a mile from Indepen- 
dence Square. Jefferson had there rented a parlor and 
bedroom, ready furnished, on the second floor, for 
thirty-five shillings a week ; and he wrote the Declara- 
tion in this parlor, upon a little writing-desk, three 
inches high, which still exists. In that modest room 
we may fancy Frankhn and Adams listening critically, 
Sherman and Livingston approvingly, to what was 
for them simply the report of a committee. Jefferson 
had written it, we are told, without the aid of a single 
book; he was merely putting into more systematic 
form a series of points long familiar ; and Parton may 
be right in the opinion that the writer was not con- 
scious of any very strenuous exercise of his faculties, 
or of any very eminent service done. 

Nothing is so difficult as to transport ourselves to 

263 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

the actual mood of mind in which great historic acts 
were performed, or in which their actors habitually 
dwelt. Thus, on the seventh day of that July, John 
Adams wrote to his wife a description of the condi- 
tion of our army, so thrilling and harrowing that it 
was, as he says, enough to fill one with horror. We 
fancy him spending that day in sackcloth and ashes ; 
but there follows on the same page another letter, 
written to the same wife on the same day — a long 
letter devoted solely to a discourse on the varieties 
of English style, in which he urges upon her a care- 
ful reading of Rollin's " Belles-lettres" and the Epis- 
tles of Pliny the Younger. Yet any one who has 
ever taken part in difficult or dangerous actions can 
understand the immense relief derived from that half- 
hour's relapse into "the still air of delightful studies." 
And it is probable that Jefferson and his companions, 
even while discussing the title-deed of our liberties, 
may have let their talk stray over a hundred collateral 
themes as remote from the immediate task as were 
Pliny and RoUin. 

During three days — the second, third, and fourth 
of July — the Declaration was debated in the Congress. 
The most vivid historic glimpse of that debate is in 
Franklin's consolatory anecdote, told to Jefferson, 
touching John Thompson, the hatter. The amend- 
ments adopted by Congress have always been ac- 
counted as improvements, because tending in the 
direction of conciseness and simplicity, though the 
loss of that stern condemnation of the slave-trade — 
"a piratical warfare against hiiman nature itself" — 
has always been regretted. The amended document 
was finally adopted, like the Virginia resolution, by 
the vote of twelve colonies. New York still abstaining. 

264 



THE DECLARATION 

If Thomas AIcKean's reminiscences at eighty can be 
trusted, it cost another effort to secure this strong vote, 
and Ccesar Rodney had again to be sent for to secure 
the Delaware delegation. McKean says, in a letter 
written in 1814 to John Adams, "I sent an express 
for Caesar Rodney to Dover, in the county of Kent, in 
Delaware, at my private expense, whom I met at the 
State-house door on the 4th of July, in his boots; he 
resided eighty miles from the city, and just arrived 
as Congress met." Jeft'erson has, however, thrown 
much doubt over these octogenarian recollections 
by McKean, and thinks that he confounded the dif- 
ferent votes. There is little doubt that this hurried 
night ride by Rodney was in preparation for the 
Second of July, not the Fourth, and that the vote 
on the Fourth went quietly through. 

But the Declaration, being adopted, was next to 
be signed ; and here again we come upon an equally 
great contradiction in testimony. This same Thomas 
McKean wrote in 18 14 to ex-President Adams, speak- 
ing of the Declaration of Independence, "No man 
signed it on that day" — namely, July 4, 1776. Jef- 
ferson, on the other hand, writing some years later, 
thought that ]\Ir. McKean' s memory had deceived 
him, Jefferson himself asserting, from his early notes, 
that "the Declaration was reported by the Committee, 
agreed to by the House, and signed by every member 
present except Mr. Dickinson." But Jefferson, who 
was also an octogenarian, seems to have forgotten the 
subsequent signing of the Declaration on parchment, 
until it was recalled to his memory, as he states, a few 
years later. If there was a previous signing of a 
written document, the manuscript itself has long 
since disappeared, and the accepted historic opinion 

265 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

is that both these venerable witnesses were mistaken ; 
that the original Declaration was signed only by the 
president and secretary, John Hancock and Charles 
Thomson, and that the general signing of the parch- 
ment copy took place on August 2d. It is probable, 
at least, that fifty-four of the fifty-six names were 
appended on that day, and that it was afterwards 
signed by Thornton, of New Hampshire, who was not 
then a member, and by McKean, who was then tem- 
porarily absent. 

Jefferson used to relate, "with much merriment," 
says Parton, that the final signing of the Declaration 
was hastened by a very trivial circumstance. Near 
the hall was a large stable, whence the flies issued in 
legions. Gentlemen were in those days peculiarly 
sensitive to such discomforts by reason of silk stock- 
ings; and when this annoyance, superadded to the 
summer heat of Philadelphia, had become intolerable, 
they hastened to bring the business to a conclu- 
sion. This may equally well refer, however, to the 
original vote ; flies are flies, whether in July or in 
August. 

American tradition has clung to the phrases as- 
signed to the different participants in this scene : John 
Hancock's commentary on his own bold handwriting, 
"There, John Bull may read my name without spec- 
tacles" ; Franklin's, "We must hang together, or else, 
most assuredly, we shall all hang separately" ; and the 
heavy Harrison's remark to the slender Elbridge 
Gerry, that in that event Gerry would be kicking in 
the air long after his own fate would be settled. These 
things may or may not have been said, but it gives a 
more human interest to the event when we know that 
they were even rumored. What we long to know is, 

266 



THE DECLARATION 

that the great acts of history were (hmc by men hke 
ourselves, and not Ijy dignified machines. 

This is the story of the signing. Of the members 
who took part in that silent drama of 1776, some 
came to greatness in consequence, becoming presi- 
dents, vice-presidents, governors, chief -justices, or 
judges; others came, in equally direct consequence, 
to poverty, flight, or imprisonment. "Hunted like 
a fox by the enemy," "a prisoner twenty-four hours 
without food," "not daring to remain two successive 
nights beneath one shelter" — these are the records 
we may find in the annals of the Revolution in regard 
to many a man who stood by John Hancock on that 
summer day to sign his name. It is a pleasure to 
think that not one of them ever disgraced, publicly 
or conspicuously, the name he had written. Of the 
rejoicings which, everywhere throughout the colonies, 
followed the signing, the tale has been often told. It 
has been told so often, if the truth must be con- 
fessed, that it is not now easy to distinguish the ro- 
mance from the simple fact. The local antiquarians 
of Philadelphia bid us dismiss forever from the rec- 
ord the picturesque old bell-ringer and his eager boy, 
waiting breathlessly to announce to the assembled 
thousands the final vote of Congress on the Declara- 
tion. The tale is declared to be a pure fiction, of 
which there exists not even a local tradition. The 
sessions of Congress were then secret, and there was 
no expectant crowd outside. It was not till the 5th 
of July that Congress sent out circulars announcing 
the Declaration ; not till the 6th that it appeared in 
a Philadelphia newspaper; and not till the 8th that 
it was read by John Nixon in the yard of Indepen- 
dence Hall. It was read from an observatory there 

267 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

erected by the American Philosophical Society, seven 
years before, to observe the transit of Venus. The 
King's arms over the door of the Supreme Court room 
in Independence Hall were torn down by a committee 
of the Volunteer force called ' ' associators ' ' ; these 
trophies were burned in the evening, in the presence 
of a great crowd of citizens, and no doubt amid the 
joyful pealing of the old " Independence" bell. There 
is also a tradition that on the afternoon of that day, 
or possibly a day or two earlier, there was a joyful 
private celebration of the great event, by Jefferson 
and others, at the garden-house of a country-seat in 
Frankford (near Philadelphia), then occupied by Dr. 
Enoch Edwards, a leading patriot of that time. 

It is certain that a portion of the signers of the 
Declaration met two years after, for a cheery com- 
memoration of their great achievement, in the Phila- 
delphia City Tavern. The enjoyment of the occasion 
was enhanced by the recent deliverance of the city 
from the presence of General Howe, and by the con- 
trast between this festival and that lately given by 
the British officers to him, known in history as the 
" Meschianza." This chapter may well close with a 
passage from the manuscript diaries of William 
Ellery, now lying before me: 

"On the glorious Fourth of July [1778], I celebrated in 
the City Tavern, with my brother delegates of Congress and 
a number of other gentlemen, amounting, in the whole, to 
about eighty, the anniversary of Independency. The en- 
tertainment was elegant and well conducted. There were 
four tables spread; two of them extended the whole length 
of the room, the other two crossed them at right angles. 
At the end of the room, opposite the upper table, was erect- 
ed an Orchestra. At the head of the upper table, and at 
the President's right hand, stood a large baked pudding, in 

268 



THE DECLARATION 

the centre of which was planted a staff, on which was dis- 
played a crimson flag, in the midst of which was this em- 
blematic device: An eye, denoting Providence; a label, on 
which was inscribed, 'An appeal to Heaven'; a man with a 
drawn sword in his hand, and in the other the Declaration 
of Independency, and at his feet a scroll inscribed, 'The 
declaratory acts.' As soon as the dinner began, the music, 
consisting of clarionets, hautboys, French horns, violins, 
and bass-viols, opened and continued, making proper pauses, 
until it was finished. Then the toasts, followed by a dis- 
charge of field - pieces, were drank, and so the afternoon 
ended. In the evening there was a cold collation and a 
brilliant exhibition of fireworks. The street was crowded 
with people during the exhibition. . . . 

"What a strange vicissitude in human affairs! These, but 
a few years since colonies of Great Britain, are now free, 
sovereign, and independent States, and now celebrate the 
anniversary of their independence in the very city where, 
but a day or two before, General Howe exhibited his ridicu- 
lous Champhaitre." 



XII 

THE BIRTH OF A NATION 

MY lords," said the Bishop of St. Asaph's, in the 
British House of Lords, " I look upon North 
America as the only great nursery of freedom left 
upon the face of the earth." It is the growth of 
freedom in this nursery which really interests us most 
in the Revolutionary period ; all the details of battles 
are quite secondary. Indeed, in any general view of 
the history of a nation, the steps by which it gets into 
a war and finally gets out again are of more impor- 
tance than all that lies between. No doubt every 
skirmish in a prolonged contest has its bearing on 
national character, but it were to consider too cu- 
riously to dwell on this, and most of the continuous 
incident of a war belongs simply to military history. 
If this is always the case, it is peculiarly true of the 
war of American independence, which exhibited, as 
was said by the ardent young Frenchman Lafayette, 
"the grandest of causes won by contests of sentinels 
and outposts." 

The Declaration of Independence was publicly read 
throughout the colonies, and was communicated by 
Washington in a general order, July 9, 1776, with the 
following announcement: "The general hopes this im- 
portant event will serve as an incentive to every 
officer and soldier to act with fidelity and courage, as 

270 



THE BIRTH OF A NATION 

knowing that now the peace and safety of his coun- 
try depend (under God) solely on the success of our 
arms; and that he is now in the service of a State 
possessed of sufficient power to reward his merit and 
advance him to the highest honors of a free country." 
Thus early did this far-seeing V^irginian give his al- 
legiance to the new government as a nation — term- 
ing it '■ a State," "a free country" ; not an agglomera- 
tion of States only, or a temporary league of free 
countries. And he needed for his encouragement all 
the strength he could gain from this new-born loyalty. 

It was a gloomy and arduous year, the year 1776. 
The first duty now assigned to Washington was that 
of sustaining himself on Long Island and guarding 
New York. Long Island was the scene of terrible 
disaster: the forces under Putnam were hemmed in 
and cut to pieces (August 27th), making Greenwood 
Cemetery a scene of death before it was a place of 
burial. In this fatal battle 8000 Americans, still raw 
and under a raw commander (Putnam), were opposed 
to 20,000 trained Hessian soldiers, supported by a 
powerful fleet. Washington decided to retreat from 
Long Island. With extraordinary promptness and 
energy he collected in a few hours, from a range of 
fourteen miles, a sufficient supply of boats — this being 
done in such secrecy that even his aides did not know 
it. For forty-eight hours he did not sleep, being near- 
ly the whole time in the saddle. He sent 9000 men, 
with all their baggage and field artillery, across a 
rapid river nearly a mile wide, within hearing of the 
enemy's camp: "the best-conducted retreat I ever 
read of," wrote General Greene. Then began de- 
sertions, by companies and almost by regiments. 

271 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

They continued during all his memorable retreat 
through the Jerseys, when his troops were barefooted 
and disheartened, and yet he contested every inch of 
ground. At the beginning of his march he heard of 
the loss of Fort Washington (November i6th) with 
2600 men, their ordnance, ammunition, and stores. 
The day before he crossed the Delaware the British 
took possession of Newport, Rhode Island, signalling 
their arrival by burning the house of William Ellery, 
who had signed the great Declaration. 

Yet amid all these accumulated disasters Washing- 
ton wrote to Congress that he could see ' ' without de- 
spondency even for a moment" what America called 
her "gloomy hours." He could breathe more freely 
at last when, on December 8th, he crossed the Dela- 
ware at Trenton with what the discouraged Reed had 
called "the wretched fragments of a broken army," 
now diminished to 3000 men. As his last boat cross- 
ed, the advanced guard of Howe's army reached the 
river and looked eagerly for means of transportation. 
Washington had seized everything that could float 
upon the water within seventy miles. 

On December 20, 1776, Washington told John Han- 
cock, then President of the Congress, "Ten days more 
will put an end to the existence of our army." Yet 
at Christmas he surprised the Hessians at Trenton, 
recrossing the river and returning on his course with 
what was perhaps the most brilliant single stroke of 
war that he ever achieved. A few days later (Jan- 
uary 3, 1777) he defeated Cornwallis at Princeton with 
almost equal ability ; and all this he did with but 5000 
men, one-half militia, the rest httle better. During 
that year there had been in service 47,000 "Conti- 
nentals" and 27,000 militia. Where were they all? 

272 



THE BIRTH OF A NATION 

These large figures had only been obtained through 
that system of short enlistments against which Wash- 
ington had in vain protested^enlistments for three 
months, or even for one month. It is useless for this 
generation to exclaim against what may seem slow- 
ness or imbecility in the government of that day. 
Why, we ask, did they not foresee what the war would 
be? — why did they not insist on longer enlistments? 
We have seen in our own time the uselessness of these 
questionings. Under popular institutions it is hard to 
convince a nation that a long war is before it; it is 
apt to be easily persuaded that peace will return in 
about sixty days; its strength is seen, if at all, in its 
reserved power and its final resources. The dawn of 
independence seemed overcast indeed when the cam- 
paign of 1776 closed, and Washington, with only 
three or four thousand men, went sadly into winter- 
quarters at Morristown. 

In April, 1777, John Adams wrote proudly to his 
wife, " Two complete years we have maintained open 
war with Great Britain and her allies, and, after all 
our difficulties and misfortunes, are much abler to 
cope with them now than we were at the beginning." 
The year that followed was in many respects the 
turning-point of the Revolution. The British had 
formed a plan which, had it been carried out, might 
have resulted in a complete triumph for them. It 
was a project to take thorough possession of the whole 
line of the Hudson — Burgoyne coming down from the 
north, Howe going up from the south — thus abso- 
lutely cutting the colonies in two, separating New 
England from the rest and conquering each by it- 
self. Happily this was abandoned for a measure that 
had no valuable results, the possession of Philadel- 

273 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

phia. It is true that in the effort to save that city 
Washington sustained defeat at Brand3rwine (Sep- 
tember II, 1777), and only came near victory, with- 
out achieving it, at Germantown (October 4th). But 
the occupation of Philadelphia divided the British 
army — now nearly fifty thousand soldiers — while the 
American army, though it had shrunk to about half 
that number, remained more concentrated. More- 
over, the comfortable winter in Philadelphia did the 
invading troops little good ; while the terrible winter 
at Valley Forge was in one sense the saving of the 
Americans. There they came under the influence of 
trained foreign officers — Pulaski and Steuben, as well 
as the young Lafayette. Baron Steuben especially 
took the hungry soldiers and taught them what drill 
meant. Heretofore there had been a different drill 
for almost every regiment — a whole regiment num- 
bering sometimes but thirty men — and many of these 
retained the practice, learned in Indian warfare, of 
marching in single file. 

Meanwhile at the north there occurred successes 
for the American army, which grew directly out of the 
abandonment of the British plan. Stark with New 
England troops defeated a detachment of Burgoyne's 
army near Bennington; and Gates took the whole of 
that army — five thousand men — prisoners at Sara- 
toga, October 17, 1777. It seemed for the moment 
that this determined the fate of the war. That sur- 
render is the only American battle included by Sir 
Edward Creasy in his Fifteen Decisive Battles of the 
World, and yet for six years its decisiveness did not 
prove final and the war went on. Those who remem- 
ber the sort of subdued and sullen hopefulness which 
prevailed, year in and year out, in the northern 

274 



THE BIRTH OF A NATION 

States during the late war for the Union, can prob- 
ably conceive something of the mood in which the 
American people saw months and years go by during 
the Revolution without any very marked progress, 
and yet with an indestructible feeling that somehow 
the. end must come. But the surrender of Burgoyne 
at least turned the scale in favor of the Americans, 
so far as the judgment of Europe was concerned. 
When the French minister, Vergennes, declared that 
" all efforts, however great, would be powerless to 
reduce a people so thoroughly determined to refuse 
submission," the alliance was a foregone conclusion. 
Dr. Franklin, with inexhaustible and wily good- 
nature, was always pressing upon the French minis- 
try this same view, and the influence of Lafayette 
seconded it. Nations hke to form alliances on the 
side that seems to be winning. Yet not even the 
French government wished to have the new nation 
too powerful; and John Jay has conclusively shown 
that Vergennes would have left the United States 
a very hampered and restricted nationality had 
not the vigor of Jay, well seconded by Adams, 
added, at a later period, an element of positive self- 
assertion beyond the good-nature of Franklin. Mean- 
while, the first treaty with France — which was also 
the first treaty of the United States with any for- 
eign government — was signed Februarys 6, 1778, two 
months after the news of Burgoyne's surrender had 
reached Paris. 

However high we rate the value of the French help, 
we must remember that the alliance united England 
against the two nations. There were many who 
were by this time convinced that the work of con- 
quest was hopeless. "The time may come," said 

275 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

the King to Lord North, in 1778, "when it will be 
wise to abandon all North America but Canada, 
Nova Scotia, and the Floridas ; but then the general- 
ity of the nation must first see it in that light." If 
there is anything that is impressed upon the very 
school-books in connection with that period it is the 
obstinacy of King George III., and yet he had learned 
thus much. On the other hand. Lord Chatham, who 
had once said, "America has resisted; I rejoice, my 
lords," was now driven by the French alliance to 
take sides against America. He saw in the proposed 
independence only the degradation of the power of 
England before the French throne, and was carried 
from a sick-bed to speak against it in Parliament 
(April 7, 1778). " My lords," he said, " I rejoice that 
the grave has not closed upon me, that I am still 
alive to uplift my voice against the dismemberment 
of this ancient and most noble monarchy." As the 
Duke of Richmond essayed to answer, Chatham was 
seized with apoplexy and was borne from the house 
to die. The young American government had gained 
a powerful alliance, but it had lost its best English 
friend. Richmond, Burke, and Fox supported its 
cause, but Chatham had roused the traditional pride 
of England against France, and Lord North was his 
successor. Then followed a period of which Wash- 
ington wrote to George Mason (March 27, 1779) that 
he was for the first time despondent, and had beheld 
no day in which he thought the liberties of America 
so endangered. The war must still go on, and the 
French army and navy must cross the Atlantic for 
its prosecution. They were cordially welcomed by 
everybody except the German settlers of New York 
and Pennsylvania, who could not forget, as Mrs. 

276 



THE BIRTH OF A NATION 

Quincy's journal tells us, the excesses committed by 
the French troops in Germany. 

The direct service done by the French alliance was 
of less value than the moral support it brought. The 
French occupied Newport, Rhode Island, in July, 1 780, 
with nearly six thousand men in army and navy. The 
unpublished memorials of that time and place con- 
tain many delightful recollections of the charming 
manners of the French officers: of the Rochambcaux, 
father and son ; of the Due de Deux-Ponts, afterwards 
King of Bavaria; of the Prince de Broglie, guillotined 
in the Revolution; of the Swedish Count Fersen, 
"the Adonis of the camp," who afterwards acted as 
coachman for the French king and queen in their 
escape from Paris ; of the Vicomte de Noailles and of 
Admiral de Ternay, the latter buried in Trinity 
Church yard in Newport. There are old houses in 
that city which still retain upon their window-panes 
the gallant inscriptions of those picturesque days, and 
there are old letters and manuscripts that portray 
their glories. One that lies before me describes the 
young noblemen driving into the country upon par- 
ties of pleasure, preceded by their running footmen — 
a survival of feudalism — tall youths in kid slippers 
and with leaping poles; another describes the recep- 
tion of Washington by the whole French garrison, in 
March, 1781. It was a brilliant scene. The four 
French regiments were known as Bourbonnais, Sois- 
sonnais, Deux-Ponts, and Saintonge; they contained 
each a thousand men; and the cavalry troop, under 
De Lauzun, was almost as large. Some of these wore 
white uniforms, with yellow or violet or crimson lapels, 
and with black gaiters ; others had a uniform of black 
and gold, with gaiters of snowy white. The officers 

277 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

displayed stars and badges ; even the officers' servants 
were gay in gold and silver lace. Over them all and 
over the whole town floated the white flag of the 
Bourbons with the fleurs-de-lis. They were drawn up 
in open ranks along the avenue leading to the long 
wharf, which was just then losing its picturesque old 
name, Queen's Hithe. This gay army, whose fresh 
uniforms and appointments contrasted strangely with 
the worn and dilapidated aspect of the Continental 
troops, received Washington with the honors due to 
a marshal of France. In the evening a ball was given 
to the American generals; Washington opened the 
dance with the beautiful Miss Champlin : he chose for 
the figure the coimtry-dance known as "A Successful 
Campaign," and, as he danced, the French officers 
took the instruments from the musicians and them- 
selves played the air and accompaniment. Thus with 
characteristic graces began the French occupation of 
Newport, and it continued to be for them rather a 
holiday campaign, until the siege of Yorktown, Vir- 
ginia, proved the qualities of their engineers and their 
soldiers. After ten days of siege, the British army, 
overwhelmed and surrounded, had to surrender at 
last (October 19, 1781); and in the great painting 
which represents the scene, at the Versailles palace. 
General de Rochambeau is made the conspicuous fig- 
ure, while Washington is quite secondary. 

Meanwhile the successes of Paul Jones in sea-fight- 
ing gained still more the respect of Europe, and his 
victorious fight of three hours in the Bon Homme 
Richard against the Serapis (1779) — the two ships 
being lashed side by side — was the earliest naval 
victory gained under the present American flag, 
which this bold sea-captain was the first to unfurl. 

278 



THE BIRTH OF A NATION 

Then the skilful campaigns of General Nathanael 
Greene (1780) rescued the Carolinas from invasion; 
and the treason of Benedict Arnold, with his plan for 
surrendering to the British the " American Gibraltar" 
— West Point — created a public excitement only- 
deepened by the melancholy death of Major Andr6, 
who was hanged as a spy, September 23, 1780. For 
nearly two years after the surrender of Comwallis the 
British troops held the cities of New York, Charleston, 
and Savannah; and though they were powerless be- 
yond those cities, yet it seemed to their garrisons, no 
doubt, that the war was not yet ended. Mrs. Josiah 
Quincy, visiting New York as a child, just before its 
evacuation by the British under Sir Guy Carleton, in 
1783, says that she accompanied her mother, Mrs. 
Morton, to call on the wife of Chief -justice Smith, an 
eminent loyalist. Their hostess brought in a little 
girl, and said, "This child has been bom since the 
Rebellion." "Since the Revolution?" replied Mrs. 
Morton. Mrs. Smith smiled, and said, good-natured- 
ly, " Well, well, Mrs. Morton, this is only a truce, not 
a peace; and we shall be back again in full posses- 
sion in two years." "This prophecy happily did not 
prove true," adds Mrs. Quincy, with exultant pa- 
triotism. 

Independence was essentially secured by the pre- 
liminary articles signed in Paris on November 30, 
1782, although the final treaty was not signed till 
September 3, 1783. It was on April 18, 1783, that 
Washington issued his order for the cessation of hos- 
tilities, thus completing, as he said, the eighth year 
of the war. The army was disbanded November 3d. 
The whole number of ' ' Continentals, ' ' or regular troops, 
employed during the contest was 231,791. Of these 

279 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

Massachusetts had furnished 67,907, Connecticut 
31,939, Virginia 26,678, Pennsylvania 25,678, and the 
other States smaller numbers, down to 2679 from 
Georgia. The expenditures of the war, as officially 
estimated in 1790, were nearly a hundred million dol- 
lars in specie ($92,485,693.15), and the debts, foreign 
expenditures, etc., swelled this to more than one hun- 
dred and thirty-five millions ($135,693,703). At the 
close, the army, which had been again and again on 
the verge of mutiny from neglect and privation, re- 
ceived pay for three months in six months' notes, 
which commanded in the market the price of two 
shillings for twenty shillings. The soldiers reached 
their homes, as Washington wrote to Congress, " with- 
out a settlement of their accounts, and without a 
farthing of money in their pockets." 

Independence being thus achieved, what was to be 
done with it ? Those who represented the nation in 
Congress, while generally agreed in patriotic feeling, 
were not agreed even on the fundamental principles 
of government. The Swiss Zubly, who represented 
Georgia, and who claimed to have been familiar with 
republican government ever since he was six years 
old, declared that it was " little better than a govern- 
ment of devils." John Adams heartily favored what 
he called republican government, but we know, from 
a letter of his to Samuel Adams (October 18, 1790), 
that he meant by it something very remote from our 
present meaning. Like many other men of modest 
origin, he had a strong love for social distinctions; he 
noted with satisfaction that there was already the 
semblance of an aristocracy in Boston ; and he, more- 
over, held that the republican forms of Poland and 
Venice were worse, and the Dutch and Swiss republics 




85* Longitude West SO* from Greeowich 



nil-; r\iri;n siatks, i783 

SIiDwiiis^ Cliiinis of the States 



THE BIRTH OF A NATION 

but little better, than the old regime in France, whose 
abuses led to the Revolution. The republic of Mil- 
ton, he thought, would imply "miseries," and the 
simple monarchical form would be better. He meant 
by republic, he said, simply a government in which 
" the people have collectively or by representation an 
essential share in the sovereignty" — such a share, 
for instance, as they have in England. This being 
the case, it is not strange that he should have regard- 
ed independence itself as but a temporary measure, 
a sort of protest, and should have looked forward 
without dismay to an ultimate reunion with England, 
under certain guarantees to be secured by treaty. 

It is very fortunate that the institutions of Ameri- 
ca were not to depend on the speculations of any one 
man, even the wisest. Many persons think of the 
organization of the United States as being the work 
of a few leaders. Had this been the truth, the Con- 
tinental government would have been organized first, 
and the State governments would have been built 
afterwards on its model. As a matter of fact, it was 
just the other way. While the great leaders were 
debating in Congress or negotiating in Europe, the 
question of government was settled by the reorgani- 
zation of successive colonies into commonwealths, 
the work being done largely by men now forgotten. 
These men took the English tradition of local self- 
government, adapted it to the new situation, and 
adjusted it to a community in which kings and noble- 
men had already begun to fade into insignificance. 

Even before independence was declared, some of 
the colonies — ]\Iassachusetts, New Hampshire, South 
Carolina, Virginia, and New Jersey — had begun to 
frame State governments on the basis of the old char- 

281 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

ter governments, but so hastily that their work need- 
ed in some cases to be revised. After the Declaration, 
New York and Maryland followed soon, and then the 
rest. We find Jefferson writing to Franklin (Au- 
gust 13, 1777) that in Virginia "the people seem to 
have laid aside the monarchical and taken up the 
republican government with as much ease as would 
have attended their throwing ofi an old and putting 
on a new suit of clothes." All these commonwealths 
agreed, almost without consultation, on certain prin- 
ciples. All recognized the sovereignty of the people, or 
at least of the masculine half of the people ; all wished 
to separate Church and State; all distinguished, as 
did the unwritten constitution of England, between 
the executive, the judicial, and the legislative depart- 
ments; all limited the executive department very 
carefully, as experience had taught them to do. No- 
where, except in Rhode Island and Pennsylvania, 
was there any recognition of the hereditary right to 
vote, this being in Rhode Island included in the 
royal charter under which that State governed itself, 
omitting only the part of royalty, till 1842. In short, 
all the scattered colonies shifted what had seemed 
the very basis of their structure, and yet found them- 
selves, after all, in good condition. We have grown 
accustomed in these days to the readiness with which 
English-speaking men can settle down anywhere on 
the planet and presently organize free institutions; 
so that we hardly recognize what a wonder it seemed 
that thirteen colonies, even while engaged in a great 
war, should one by one quietly cr^^stallize into shape. 
The great difficulty was to unite these little com- 
monwealths into a nation. It took one unsuccessful 
experiment to teach the way of success, and it is as- 

282 



THE BIRTH OF A NATION 

tonishing that it did not take a dozen. It was a 
strange period. The war had unsettled men's minds, 
as is done by all great wars. It had annihilated all 
loyalty to the king, but it had done much more than 
this. It had made the rich poor and the poor rich ; 
had filled the nation with irredeemable paper-money ; 
had created a large class whose only hope was to 
evade payment of their debts. "Oh, Mr. Adams," 
said John Adams's horse-jockey client, "what great 
things have you and your colleagues done for us! 
We can never be grateful enough to you. There are 
no courts of justice now in this province, and I hope 
there never will be another." 

The first experiment at nationl union was the Con- 
federation. It was based essentially on a theory of 
Jefferson's, although Jefferson, having retired from 
the Congress, was not responsible for the form of 
union agreed upon. The theory was to make "the 
States one as to everything connected with foreign na- 
tions and several as to everything purely domestic." 
For purposes of foreign commerce a confederation 
must exist. To this all finally agreed, though with 
much reluctance. Indeed, the original apostles of this 
theory did not much believe in any such commerce. 
Jefferson wrote from Paris (in 1785) that if he had his 
way " the States should practise neither commerce nor 
navigation," but should "stand with respect to Eu- 
rope precisely on the footing of China." But he ad- 
mitted that he could not have his way, and wrote to 
Monroe (December 11, 1785) from Paris: "On this 
side of the Atlantic we are viewed as objects of com- 
merce only." Granting thus much, then, to be in- 
evitable, how was little Rhode Island or Delaware to 
resist the aggressions of any European bully, or of 

283 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

those Algerine or Tripolitan pirates who then bullied 
even the bullies themselves? For this purpose, at 
least, there must be some joint action. How could 
the United States treat with any foreign govern- 
ment when, as Washington said (in 1785), they were 
" one nation to-day and thirteen to-morrow " ? They 
must, therefore, unite sufficiently to make a treaty 
and enforce it, but no further. In other words, they 
undertook to build a house which should have an 
outside but no inside. 

The Confederation was originally put in shape 
through a committee appointed by Congress, June 11, 
1776, "to prepare and digest the form of a confedera- 
tion to be entered into between these colonies." But 
the "articles" thus prepared were not accepted by 
Congress till November 15, 1777, and they had been 
much modified before they received the assent of the 
last of the States, on March i, 1781. During all this 
time the affairs of the war were carried on loosely 
enough by Congress — still a single House — which had 
come to be familiarly known among the people as 
"King Cong." But this king had absolutely no 
power save in the impulsive support of the people. It 
was a thankless office to sit in Congress; the best men 
were more and more reluctant to serve there. To 
reach it, wherever it sat — Philadelphia, Baltimore, 
Lancaster, York, Princeton, or Annapolis — was to 
most of the members far more of a journey than to 
reach San Francisco or London from Philadelphia or 
Annapolis to-day. Inasmuch as all votes were taken 
by States — and every State had an equal vote, so 
long as there was one man to represent it — there 
was a strong temptation for delegates to absent them- 
selves ; and a single member from Delaware or Rhode 

284 



THE BIRTH OF A NATION 

Island could, if present, balance the whole represen- 
tation from New York or Virginia. "It is enough to 
sicken one," wrote General Knox to Washington, in 
March, 1783, "to observe how light a matter many- 
States make of their not being represented in Con- 
gress — a good proof of the badness of the present 
Constitution." Even on the great occasion when the 
resignation of Washington was to be received, there- 
were present only twenty members, representing but 
seven of the colonies. "It is difficult," wrote M. 
Otto to the French government, "to assemble seven 
States, which form the number required to transact 
the least important business"; and he wrote again, a 
few months after, that the secret of the predominant 
influence of Massachusetts in the Congress was that 
she usually kept four or five able delegates there, 
while other States rarely had two. As we read the 
records we can only wonder that the organization did 
its work so well; and it is not at all strange that, as 
the same General Knox wrote to Washington, the 
favorite toasts in the army were, "Cement to the 
Union" and "A hoop to the barrel." 

There were those who believed that nothing but 
the actual necessities of another war could really unite 
the colonies, and some patriots frankly wished for 
that calamity. M. Otto, writing home in December, 
1785, to M. de Vergennes, declared that Mr. Jay 
was the most influential man in Congress, and that 
Mr. Jay had lately expressed in his hearing a wish 
that the Algerine pirates, then so formidable, would 
bum some of the maritime towns of the United States, 
in order to reunite the nation and call back the old 
feeling. "The majority of Congress perceive very 
clearly," he wrote, "that war would serve as a bond 

285 



H I S T O R Y O 1' '1^ H E UNITED STAT i^: S 

to the Confederation, but they cannot conceal the 
lack of means which they possess to carry it on with 
advantage." 

This desperate remedy being out of the question, 
the "hoop to the barrel" must be put on by some 
more peaceful method. Yet each way had its own 
perplexities. There were jealousies of long standing 
between North and South, between the colonies 
which were ready to abolish slavery and those which 
clung to it. Then the course of the Confederation had 
only increased the mutual distrust between the small 
and the large States. There were objections to a 
permanent President ; some would have preferred, as 
a very few would still prefer, to have a system like 
that now prevailing in the Swiss Confederation, and 
to place at the head merely the chairman of a com- 
mittee. Again, there existed a variety of opinions 
as to a legislature of one or two Houses. It is said 
that when Jefferson returned from France he was 
breakfasting with Washington, and asked him why 
he agreed to a Senate. 

" Why," said Washington, " did you just now pour 
that coffee into your saucer before drinking it?" 
"To cool it," said Jefferson; "my throat is not made 
of brass." "Even so," said Washington, "we pour 
our legislation into the Senatorial saucer to cool it." 

Franklin, like Jefferson, approved only of the single 
chamber of deputies, and it has been thought that to 
his great influence in France, leading to the adoption 
of that method, were due some of the excesses of the 
French Revolution. The States of Pennsylvania and 
Georgia had, during the Confederation, but one legis- 
lative body ; the Confederation itself had but one, and 
the great State of New York voted in the conven- 

286 




PATRICK HENRY 



T II E B I R T H O F A N A T 1 O x\ 

tion of 1787 against having more than one. Some of 
the most enlightened European reformers — Mazzini, 
Louis Blanc, John Stuart Mill, even Gold win Smith — 
have always believed the second House to be a source 
of weakness in American institutions, while the general 
feeling of Americans is overwhelmingly in its favor. 
Yet its mere existence is a type of that combination 
which is at the foundation of the national govern- 
ment. If Patrick Henry was right, if he had wholly 
ceased to be a Virginian in becoming an American, 
then there should be no separate representation of 
the States. If Jefferson was right — who considered 
the Union only a temporary device to carry the col- 
onies through the war for independence — then the 
States only should be represented, and they should 
weigh equally, whether small or large. But Elbridge 
Gerry included both statements when he said: "We 
are neither the same nation nor different nations. 
We ought not, therefore, to -pursue the one or the 
other of these ideas too closely." This statement is 
regarded by Von Hoist, one of the acutest foreign 
critics of American institutions since De Tocqueville, 
as containing the whole secret of American history. 
We are apt to suppose that the sentiment of union 
among the colonies, once formed, went steadily on 
increasing. Not at all ; it went, like all other things, 
by action and reaction. It was before a shot was 
fired that Patrick Henry had thrilled the people's 
ears with his proud assertion of nationality. But as the 
war went on the "people" of the United States came 
again to be loosely described as the "inhabitants" 
of the States. The separate commonwealths had the 
organization, the power, all but the army, and one 
of them, North Carolina, went so far as to plan a 

287 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

fleet. The Confederation was only, as it described 
itself, "a firm league of friendship"; the Continental 
government was once actually characterized in Mas- 
sachusetts as a foreign power; it was the creation of 
war's necessities, while the States controlled the daily 
life. Washington had to complain that the States 
were too much engaged in their "local concerns," 
and he had to plead for the "great business of a 
nation." Fisher Ames wrote, " Instead of feeling as 
a nation, a State is our country." So far as the in- 
fluence of foreign nations went, it tended only to 
disintegrate, not to unite. Even the one friendly 
government of Europe, France, had no interest in 
promoting union; the cabinet at Versailles wrote 
to its minister in America (August 30, 1787) that it 
would not regret to see the Confederation broken up, 
and that it had recognized "no other object than to 
deprive Great Britain of that vast continent." 

In short, the Confederation waned day by day ; it 
had no power, for power had been carefully withheld 
from it; it had only influence, and, as Washington 
once said, "influence is not government." Fisher 
Ames declared that " the corporation of a college or a 
missionary society were greater potentates than Con- 
gress. . . . The government of a great nation had 
barely revenue enough to buy stationery for its clerks 
or to pay the salary of the door-keepers." It existed 
only to carry on the war as it best could, and when 
the war ended the prestige of the Confederation was 
gone. There was left a people without a govern- 
ment, and this people was demoralized amid success, 
discontented in spite of its triumph. W^ashington 
thus despairingly summed up the situation: "From 
the high ground we stood upon, from the plain path 



THE BIRTH OF A N A T I O xN 

which invited our footsteps, to be so fallen, so lost, 
is really mortifying; but virtue, I fear, has in some 
degree taken its departure from our land, and the 
want of a disposition to do justice is the source of our 
national embarrassments." 

The downfall of the Confederation was greatly aid- 
ed by the celebrated insurrection of Daniel Shays in 
Massachusetts — an occasion when armed mobs broke 
up the courts and interrupted all the orderly processes 
of law. This body numbered, according to the esti- 
mate of General Knox- who went to Springfield to 
provide for the defence of the arsenal against them 
—not less than twelve or fifteen thousand men, scat- 
tered through the New England States; and he esti- 
mated the whole force of their friends and supporters 
at two-sevenths of the population. The grounds of 
this insurrection were, as it seems to me, a shade more 
plausible, and hence more formidable than the his- 
torians have recognized. As stated by Knox, these 
views were based expressly on the peculiar state of 
things at the close of a long and exhausting war, and 
amounted simply to the doctrine that, being narrowly 
rescued from shipwreck, the whole half-dro\\Tied com- 
pany should share alike. As a result of the war, they 
urged, almost everybody was bankrupt. John 
Adams's horse- jockey client was really no worse ofl' 
than the most sober and honest mechanic. Of the 
few who had any money, some were speculators and 
contractors, who had grown rich out of the govern- 
ment ; others were Tories in disguise, who had saved 
their property from a just confiscation. All this 
property, having been saved from the British by the 
sacrifices of all, should in justice be shared among 
all. Yet thev would not demand so much as that: 

10 28q 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

let there be simply a remission of debts and a further 
issue of paper-money. 

Audacious as this proposition now seems, it was 
not wholly inconsistent with some things that had 
gone before it. If Washington himself thought it 
fitting to celebrate the surrender of Cornwallis by a 
general release of prisoners from jail, why not now 
carry this rejoicing a little further, and have an 
equally general release of those who were on their 
way to jail? Thus they reasoned, or might have 
reasoned; and all this helps us to understand a little 
better why it was that Jefiferson did not share the 
general alarm at these doctrines, but, on the whole, 
rather approved of the outbreak. "Can history pro- 
duce," he said, "an instance of rebellion so honor- 
ably conducted?" "God forbid we shall ever be 
without such a rebellion!" "A little rebellion now 
and then is a good thing." "An observation of this 
truth should render republican governors so mild as 
not to discourage them too much." Yet those who 
were on the spot saw in this rebellion not only the 
weakness of the general government, but that of the 
separate States as well. " Not only is State against 
State, and all against the Federal head," wrote Gen- 
eral Knox to Washington, "but the States within 
themselves possess the name only, without having the 
essential concomitants of government. . . . On the 
very first impression of faction and licentiousness, 
the one theoretic government of Massachusetts has 
given way." 

Even before this insurrection, a convention, at- 
tended by five States only, had been held at Annap- 
olis (September, 1786), with a view to some improved 
national organization. It called a general conven- 

290 



THE BIRTH OF A NATION 

tion, which met at Philadelphia, having barely a 
quorum of States, on May 25, 1787. There the dele- 
gates sat amid constant interruptions and antago- 
nisms, the majority of the New York delegation leav- 
ing once under protest. South Carolina protesting, 
Elbridge Gerry predicting failure, and Benjamin 
Franklin despairingly proposing to open the sessions 
thenceforward with prayer as the last remaining hope. 
Then the Constitution was adopted at last — only to 
come into new and more heated discussion in every 
State. We have in The Federalist the great defence 
of it by Hamilton, Madison, and Jay; but Patrick 
Henry himself turned his eloquence against it in Vir- 
ginia, and Samuel Adams in Massachusetts. These 
were two very powerful opponents, who were well 
entitled to a voice ; and in these two important States 
the Constitution was accepted by majorities so small 
that the change of a dozen votes would have caused 
defeat. In the New York convention the vote stood 
30 to 27; in Rhode Island, 34 to 32; this being the 
last State to ratify, and the result being secured by 
a change of one vote under the instructions of a town- 
meeting in the little village of Middletown. By a 
chance thus narrow was the United States bom into 
a nation. The contest, as Washington wrote to Lee, 
was "not so much for glory as existence." 

And as thus finally created the nation was neither 
English nor French, but American. It was in very 
essential features a new departure. It is common to 
say that the French Revolution brought with it 
French political theories in the United States. Ed- 
mund Burke wrote that the colonists were "not only 
devoted to liberty, but to liberty according to Eng- 
lish ideas and on English principles," yet there is a 

291 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

prevalent impression that the influence of France 
converted this English feeling into a French habit of 
mind, and that the desire to legislate on the abstract 
rights of man came from that side of the English 
Channel. But JeflEerson had never been in France, 
nor under any strong French influence, when he, as 
the Rev. Ezra Stiles said, "poured the soul of a con- 
tinent into the monumental Act of Independence"; 
and Franklin had made but flying visits to Paris 
when he wrote in England, about 1770, those strik- 
ing sentences, under the name of " Some Good Whig 
Principles," which form the best compendium of 
what is called Jeff ersonian Democracy ; ' ' The all of 
one man is as dear to him as the all of another, and 
the poor man has an equal right, but more need, 
to have representatives in the legislature than the 
rich one." What are sometimes reproachfully called 
"transcendental politics" — political action, that is, 
based on an abstract theory — arose spontaneously 
in that age ; the Constitution was based on them ; and 
in urging them America probably influenced France 
more than France affected America. 

One of the most momentous acts of the Continental 
Congress had been to receive from the State of Vir- 
ginia the gift of a vast unsettled territory northwest 
of the Ohio, and to apply to this wide realm the guar- 
antee of freedom from slavery. This safeguard was 
but the fulfilment of a condition suggested by Tim- 
othy Pickering, when, in 1783, General Rufus Put- 
nam and nearly three hundred army officers had pro- 
posed to form a new State in that very region of 
the Ohio. They sent in a memorial to Congress ask- 
ing for a grant of land. Washington heartily en- 
dorsed the project, but nothing came of it. North 

292 



THE B I R 1^ H OF A NATION 

Carolina soon after made a cession of land to the 
United States, and then revoked it ; but the people 
of the ceded territory declared themselves for a time 
to be a separate State, under the name of Franklin. 
Virginia, through Thomas Jefferson, finally dehvered 
a deed on March i, 1784, by which she ceded to the 
United States all her territory northwest of the Ohio. 
The great gift was accepted, and a plan of govern- 
ment was adopted, into which Jefferson tried to in- 
troduce an antislavery ordinance, but he was de- 
feated by a single vote. Again, in 1785, Rufus King, 
of Massachusetts, seconded by William Ellery, of 
Rhode Island, proposed to revive Jefferson's rejected 
clause, but again it failed, being smothered by a com- 
mittee. It was not till July 13,1 787, that the statute 
was passed by which slavery was forever prohibited 
in the territory of the Northwest, this being moved by 
Nathan Dane as an amendment to an ordinance al- 
ready adopted — which he himself had framed — and 
being passed by a vote of ever>^ State present in the 
Congress, eight in all. Under this statute the Ohio 
Company- organized in Boston the year before as 
the final outcome of Rufus Putnam's proposed col- 
ony of ojfficers — bought from the government five or 
six millions of acres, and entered on the first great 
movement of emigration west of the Ohio. The 
act creating the colony provided for public schools, 
for religious institutions, and for a university. The 
land was to be paid for in United States certificates 
of debt, and its price in specie was between eight and 
nine cents an acre. The settlers were almost wholly 
men who had served in the army, and were used to 
organization and discipline. The Indian title to the 
lands of the proposed settlement had been released 

293 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

by treaty. It was hailed by all as a gre^t step in the 
national existence, although it was really a far great- 
er step than any one yet dreamed. " No colony in 
America," wrote Washington, "was ever settled im- 
der such favorable auspices as that which has just 
commenced at the Muskingum." 

It had been provided that the new Constitution 
should go into effect when nine States had ratified it. 
That period having arrived, Congress fixed the first 
Wednesday in January, 1789, for the choice of Presi- 
dential electors, and the first Wednesday in March 
as the date when the new government should go 
into power. On March 4, 1789, the Continental Con- 
gress ceased to exist, but it was several weeks before 
either House of the new Congress was organized. On 
April 6th, the organization of the two Houses being 
complete, the electoral votes were counted; and on 
April 2ist John Adams took his seat as Vice-presi- 
dent in the chair of the Senate. On the 30th of 
April the streets around the old "Federal Hall" in 
New York City were so densely crowded that it seem- 
ed, in the vivid phrase of an eye-witness, "as if one 
might literally walk on the heads of the people." On 
the balcony of the hall was a table covered with 
crimson velvet, upon which lay a Bible on a crimson 
cushion. Out upon the balcony came, with his ac- 
customed dignity, the man whose generalship, whose 
patience, whose self-denial had achieved and then 
preserved the liberties of the nation — the man who, 
greater than Ccesar, had held a kingly crown within 
reach and had refused it. Washington stood a mo- 
ment amid the shouts of the people, then bowed, and 
took the oath administered by Chancellor Livingston. 
At this moment a flag was raised upon the cupola of 

294 



THE BIRTH OF A NATION 

the hall; a discharge of artillery followed, and the 
assembled people again filled the air with their shout- 
ing. Thus simple was the ceremonial which an- 
nounced that a nation was bom. 



XIII 
OUR COUNTRY'S CRADLE 

" Peace, which in our country s cradle 
Draws the sweet infant breath of gentle sleep." 

Shakespeare. Richard II., i. 3. 

THE year 1789 saw a new nation in its cradle in 
the city of New York. Liberty was bom, but 
had yet to learn how to go alone. Political prece- 
dents were still to be established, social customs to 
be formed anew. New York City, the first seat of 
national government, had warmly welcomed Wash- 
ington, though the State of New York had not voted 
for him ; and now that he was in office, men and wom- 
en waited with eager interest to see what kind of 
political and social life would surround him. The 
city then contained nearly thirty-three thousand peo- 
ple. It had long been more cosmopolitan than any 
other in the colonies, but it had also been longer oc- 
cupied by the British, and had been more lately un- 
der the influence of loyal traditions and royal offi- 
cials. This influence the languid sway of the Confed- 
eration had hardly dispelled. What condition of 
things would the newly organized republic establish ? 
It was a period of much social display. Class dis- 
tinctions still prevailed strongly, for the French Rev- 
olution had not yet followed the American Revolu- 
tion to sweep them away. Employers were still 

296 



OUR C O U X 'J^ R Y ' S C R A D L Iv 

called masters; gentlemen still wore velvets, damasks, 
knee-breeches, silk stockings, silver buckles, ruffled 
shirts, voluminous cravats, scarlet cloaks. The Rev- 
olution had made many poor, but it had enriched 
many, and money was lavishly spent. People gave 
great entertainments, kept tankards of punch on the 
table for morning visitors of both sexes, and returned 
in sedan-chairs from evening parties. Dr. !\Ianasseh 
Cutler went to a dinner-party of forty-four gentle- 
men at the house of General Knox, just before his 
appointment as Secretary of War. All the guests 
were officers of the late Continental army, and every 
one, except Cutler himself, wore the badge of the 
Society of the Cincinnati. On another occasion he 
dined there with a French nobleman ; the dinner was 
served "in high style, much in the I'rench style." 
Mrs. Knox seemed to him to mimic "the military 
style," which he found " very disgusting in a female." 
This is his description of her head-dress: "Her hair 
in front is crapecl at least a foot high, much in the 
form of a churn bottom upward, and topped off with 
a wire skeleton in the same form, covered with black 
gauze, which hangs in streamers down her back. Her 
hair behind is in a large braid, and confined with a 
monstrous crooked comb." 

Mrs. Knox's head-dress would have had no more 
importance than that of any other lady of the period 
but that no other lady came so near to being the 
active head of American "society" at the outset of 
this government. General Knox and his wife were 
two people of enormous size — were, indeed, said to 
be the largest couple in New York — and they were 
as expansive in their hospitality as in their persons. 
The European visitors, who were abundant about 
20 ■ 297 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

that time, and especially the numerous Frenchmen 
who flocked to see the new republic — and who then, 
as now, gravitated naturally to that society where 
they were best amused — turned readily to Mrs. 
Knox's entertainments from those of Mrs. Washing- 
ton. One traveller even complained of the new Presi- 
dent that his bows were more distant and stiff than 
any he had seen in England. Of the other members 
of the cabinet, neither Hamilton, Jefferson, nor Ran- 
dolph was in a position to receive company in the 
grand style, so that during the short period when 
New York was the seat of government the house of 
General Knox in Broadway was emphatically the 
centre of social vivacity for the nation. 

This was a matter of some importance when more 
political questions were settled at the dinner-table 
than in public debate, and when Washington himself 
would invite his subordinates to discuss affairs of 
State " over a bottle of wine." The social life of any 
community is always the foundation of its political 
life, and this was especially true when the United 
States began to exist, because there was a general 
suspicion in Europe that the new republic would be 
hopelessly plebeian. When we consider that even 
in 1845 an English lady of rank, trying to dissuade 
Dickens from visiting America, said, "Why do you 
not go down to Brighton, and visit the third and 
fourth rate people there? — that would be just the 
same," we know that she only expressed the current 
British feeling, which must have existed very much 
more strongly in 1789. What could be the social 
condition of that country whose highest official had 
never been in Europe, and did not speak French? 
Against this suspicion the six white horses of Presi- 

298 



OUR COUNTRY'S CRADLE 

dent Washington were a comparatively slight protest. 
Mere wealth can buy horses ; indeed, they arc among 
the first symptoms of wealth. To discerning ob- 
servers the true mark of superiority was to be found 
in the grave dignity of the man. It is hard to see 
how he acquired that trait among the jovial fox- 
hunting squires in whose society he had been reared ; 
perhaps his real training was in his long and silent 
expeditions in the woods. His manners and his bear- 
ing showed the marks of that forest life, and not of 
an artificial society; his gait, according to his en- 
thusiastic admirer, William Sullivan, was that of a 
farmer or woodsman, not of a soldier; he reminded 
Josiah Ouincy of the country gentlemen from west- 
em Massachusetts, not accustomed to mix much in 
society, and not easy or graceful, though strictly 
polite. But the most genuine personal dignity he 
certainly had; his wife sustained him in it — at least 
until party bitterness began to prevail — and there- 
fore the young French noblemen found his manners 
as unquestionably good as their own, though less 
pliant. 

Nor were any of the members of his cabinet want- 
ing in this respect. French society as well as French 
political principles had influenced Jefferson, and he 
showed by his flattering words to Madame de Bre- 
han and other fine ladies that he had cultivated the 
arts of a courtier; Hamilton had refined manners, 
with the ready adaptation that came from his French 
blood and his West India birth ; Randolph was called 
"the first gentleman of Virginia," though described 
by Sullivan as grave and heavy in aspect; while the 
cheerful Knox was a man of better early education 
than any of these, for he had been a bookseller, and 

299 



TIT STORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

his book-store in Boston had been, it is recorded, " a 
great resort for the British officers and Tory ladies 
who were the ton at that period." Tried by the 
standard of the time, there was nothing to be ashamed 
of, but indeed quite the contrary, in the bearing of 
Washington's cabinet ministers. John Adams was 
Vice-president, and the Chief-justice was the high- 
minded John Jay. Both these men had agreeable 
and accomplished wives. Mrs. Adams was a woman 
of much social experience as well as talent and char- 
acter. She describes Mrs Jay as "showy but pleas- 
ing," and both these women appear to greatest ad- 
vantage in their letters to their respective husbands. 
As to the households of the cabinet ministers, Jeffer- 
son was a widower ; Mrs. Knox has already been char- 
acterized ; and the French traveller Brissot described 
Mrs. Hamilton as "a charming woman, who joined 
to the graces all the candor and simp ci y of the 
American wife." These made the leading official 
families at the seat of government. 

The French Minister at that t me was the Comte 
de Moustier, whose sist r, Madame de Brehan, ac- 
companied him to this country. Jefferson had as- 
sured her that her manners were a "model of per- 
fection," while others found her "a little, singular, 
whimsical, hysterical old woman." The secretary of 
legation was M. Otto, part of whose keen and pene- 
trating correspondence has been translated by Ban- 
croft; he had married an American wife, one of the 
Livingston family. The English consul-general. Sir 
John Temple, had also married an American, the 
daughter of Governor Bowdoin, of Massachusetts. 
These were the leading people "in society" — a so- 
ciety whose standard, after all, was not luxurious or 



OUR COUNTRY'S CRADLE 

extravagant. Oliver Wolcott wrote to his wife when 
he was invited to come to New York as Auditor of the 
Treasury: "The example of the President and his 
family will render parade and expense improper and 
disreputable." It is pleasant to add that after three 
months' stay at the seat of government he wrote 
home to his mother, " Honesty is as much in fashion 
as in Connecticut." 

Mrs. Washington's receptions were reproached as 
"introductory to the pageantry of courts," but it 
was very modest pageantry. Nothing could have 
been less festive or more harmless than the hospitality 
of the Presidential abode. An English manufacturer 
who was invited there to breakfast reports a meal of 
admirable simplicity — tea, coffee, sliced tongue, dry 
toast, and butter — "but no broiled fish, as is the 
general custom," he adds. At her evening recep- 
tions Mrs. Washington offered her guests tea and 
coffee with plum-cake ; at nine she warned her visitors 
that the general kept early hours, and after this re- 
mark the guest had no choice but to do the same. 
At these entertainments of hers the President was 
but a guest — without his sword — and found it neces- 
sary also to retreat in good order at the word of com- 
mand. His own receptions were for invited guests 
only, and took place every other week between three 
and four p.m. The President stood before the fire- 
place in full black \'clvet, with his hair powdered and 
gathered into a bag; he wore yellow gloves and silver 
buckles, with a steel-hilted sword in a white leather 
scabbard; he held in his hand a cocked hat with a 
feather. This is the dcscri])tion gi\'en by William 
Sullivan in his Familiar Letters on Puhlic Characters. 

If it was the object of Washington to make these 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

occasions stiffer than the drawing-rooms of any 
crowned potentate, he succeeded. Names were an- 
nounced, gentlemen were presented, the President 
bowed, but never shook hands; at a quarter-past 
three the doors were closed and the visitors formed 
a circle; the President made the circuit, addressing 
a few words to each; then they bowed and retired. 
It is hard to imagine that these mild entertainments 
could have been severely censured as extravagant or 
monarchical; one can better comprehend how the 
censure could be applied to the street equipage of 
the new President — the cream-colored carriage paint- 
ed in medallions and the liveries of white turned up 
with green. Yet these were, perhaps, more readily 
recognized as essential to the dignity of his station. 
It was with the desire of promoting this dignity 
that the Senators of the new nation were anxious to 
give the President an official title. The plan was 
said to have originated with John Adams, who be- 
lieved "splendor and majesty" to be important in a 
republic; and there was a joint committee of Con- 
gress to consider the matter. This committee re- 
ported against it, but the dissatisfied Senate still 
favored a title, as it well might, at a time when the 
Senators themselves were habitually called "Most 
Honorable." They proposed to call the Chief Mag- 
istrate " His Highness the President of the United 
States of America and Protector of their Liberties." 
The House objected ; the country at large was divided. 
Chief -justice McKean proposed " His Serene High- 
ness"; somebody else suggested "The President-Gen- 
eral"; and Governor Sullivan thought that "His Pa- 
triotic Majesty" would not be inappropriate, since 
he represented the majesty of the people. Wash- 

302 



OUR COUNTRY'S CRADLE 

ington himself, it is said, favored "His High Mighti- 
ness," which was the phrase used by the Stadtholder 
of Holland. It was the common-sense of the nation 
that swept these extravagances aside; it was one of 
the many occasions in American history when the 
truth of Talleyrand's saying has been vindicated, that 
everybody knows more than anybody. 

But when it became needful to go behind these 
externals, and to select a cabinet ministry for the 
actual work of government, the sane and quiet judg- 
ment of Washington made itself felt. At that period 
the cabinet consisted of but four persons, and it was 
the theory that it should not be made up of mere 
clerks and staff officers, but of the ablest and most 
conspicuous men in the nation. Washington being 
President, Adams and Jay having also been assigned 
to office, there naturally followed the two men who 
had contributed most in their different ways to the 
intellectual construction of the nation. Hamilton 
and Jefferson were brought together in the cabinet — 
the one as Secretary of the Treasury, the other as 
Secretary of State — not because they agreed, but be- 
cause they differed. Tried by all immediate and 
temporary tests, it is impossible to deny to Hamilton 
the position of leading intellect during the early consti- 
tutional period ; and his clear and cogent ability con- 
trasts strongly with the peculiar mental action, al- 
ways fresh and penetrating, but often lawless and 
confused, of his great rival. Hamilton was more co- 
herent, more truthful, more combative, more gener- 
ous, and more limited. His power was as an organ- 
izer and advocate of measures, and this is a less secure 
passport to fame than lies in the announcement of 
great principles. The dift'erence between Hamilton 

303 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

and J efferson on questions oi finance and State rights 
was only the symbol of a deeper divergence. The 
contrast between them was not so much in acts as 
in theories; not in what they did, but in what they 
dreamed. Both had their visions, and held to them 
ardently, but the spirit of the nation was fortunately 
stronger than either; it made Hamilton support a 
republic against his will, and made Jefferson acquiesce, 
in spite of himself, in a tolerably strong central gov- 
ernment. 

There is not a trace of evidence that Hamilton, 
even when most denounced as a "monocrat" and a 
"monist," ever desired to bring about a monarchy 
in America. He no doubt believed the British con- 
stitution to be the most perfect model of government 
ever devised by man ; but it is also true, as Jefferson 
himself admitted, that Hamilton saw the spirit of the 
American people to be wholly republican. This is 
just what Hamilton says of himself; all his action 
was based on the opinion "that the political princi- 
ple of this country would endure nothing but repub- 
lican government." Fisher Ames, his ablest ally, 
said the same as explicitly: "Monarchy is no path of 
liberty — offers no hopes. It could not stand; and 
would, if tried, lead to more agitation and revolution 
than anything else." What Hamilton and Ames be- 
lieved — and very reasonably, so far as the mere teach- 
ings of experience went — was that a republic was an 
enormous risk to run ; and they drew the very ques- 
tionable conclusion that this risk must be diminished 
by making the republic as much like a monarchy as 
possible. For instance, if Hamilton could have had 
his way, only holders of real estate would have had 
the right to vote for President and Senators, and 

304 



OUR C O U X T R \ ' S C RAD L E 

these would Jiavc licld office for life, or at least during 
good behavior; the I^resident would have appointed 
all the governors of States, and they would have had 
a veto on all State legislation. All this he announced 
in the Constitutional Convention with the greatest 
frankness, not hesitating to call even the British 
House of Lords "a most noble institution." Having 
thus indicated his ideal government, he accepted 
what he could get, and gave his great powers to carry- 
ing out a constitution about which he had serious 
misgivings. On the other hand, if Jefferson could 
have had his way, national organization would have 
been a shadow. ''Were it left me to decide," he 
once wTote, "whether we should have a government 
without newspapers or a newspaper without a gov- 
ernment, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer 
the latter." He accepted the Constitution as a neces- 
sary evil, tempered by ncwsjxipers — then the very 
worst newspapers that ever flourished on .\merican 
soil. 

"Hamilton and I," wrote Jefferson, "were pitted 
against each other every Vlay in the cabinet, like two 
fighting-cocks." The first passage between them was 
the only one in which Hamilton had clearly the 
advantage of his less practised antagonist, making 
Jefferson, indeed, the instrument of his own defeat. 
The transfer of the capital to the banks of the Poto- 
mac was secured by the first of many compromises 
between the northern and southern States, after a 
debate in which the formidable slavery question 
showed itself often, as it had shown itself at the very 
formation of the Constitution. The removal of the 
capital was clearly the price paid by Hamilton for 
Jefferson's acquiescence in his first great financial 

305 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

measure. This measure was the national assumption 
of the State debts to an amoimt not to exceed twenty 
million dollars. It was met by vehement opposition, 
partly because it bore very unequally on the States, 
but mainly on the grotmd that the claims were in the 
hands of speculators, and were greatly depreciated. 
Yet it was an essential part of that great series of 
financial projects on which Hamilton's fame must 
rest, even more than on his papers in The Federalist 
— though these secured the adoption of the Constitu- 
tion, Three measures — the assumption of the State 
debts, the funding act, and the national bank — were 
what changed the bankruptcy of the new nation into 
solvency and credit. There may be question as to 
the good or bad precedents established by these enact- 
ments, but there can be no doubt as to their imme- 
diate success. Jefferson opposed them; it is certain 
that Jefferson never could have originated them or 
carried them through. The financial problem — the 
first, and in one sense the lowest problem to be met 
by the new government — was solved by Hamilton. 

It seems curious to find in the correspondence of 
the public men of that day so little that relates to the 
appointment or removal of particular officials. One 
reason is that the officials were then so few. The 
whole number in civil office during Washington's ad- 
ministration were, in his own phrase, "a mere hand- 
ful," and during his two Presidential terms he re- 
moved but eight, all for cause, this list not including 
Pinckney, the French Minister, who was recalled 
by desire of the government of that nation. The 
question of removal was almost wholly an abstract 
one, but, fortunately for us, the men of that period 
had a great taste for the abstract principles of gov- 

306 



OUR COUNTRY'S CRADLE 

ernment ; and the consequence was that this particular 
question was debated as fully and ardently as if the 
number of officials had already been reckoned by 
tens of thousands. Many points in the prolonged 
controversy seem like the civil service discussions of 
to-day. The main debate took place in the House 
of Representatives, beginning June i6, 1789, and 
lasting four days ; and it is fortunately preserved to us 
in full as a part of the appendix to Elliott's Debates. 
It arose on the bill to establish the Department of 
Foreign Affairs, afterwards called the State Depart- 
ment. It was moved to strike out the words — as 
applied to the officer thus created — "to be remov- 
able from office by the President of the United States." 
The importance of the subject was amply recognized, 
Mr. Madison going so far as to say: "The decision 
that is at this time made will become the permanent 
exposition of the constitution ; and on a permanent ex- 
position of the constitution will depend the genius 
and character of the whole government." He and 
others took the ground that in no way could full 
executive responsibility be placed upon the Presi- 
dent unless he had a corresponding power over his 
subordinates. All the familiar arguments in favor 
of a strong government were brought forward, and 
they were met by the obvious arguments against 
it. "This clause of the bill," said Page, of North 
Carolina, "contains in it the seeds of royal preroga- 
tive. Everything which has been said in favor of 
energy in the Executive may go to the destruction 
of freedom and establish despotism. This very 
energy, so much talked of, has led many patriots to 
the Bastile, to the block, and to the halter." 

Perhaps the ablest assailant of the power of re- 

307 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

Mioval was l:^ll)ri(lge Gerry, of Massachusetts — he 
through whom a new and permanent phrase was later 
added to the American dialect in the word gerrymander. 
He claimed in this debate that unlimited removal 
from office belonged only to a king; that to a four 
years' President such power could only be made use- 
ful "by being the means of procuring him a re-elec- 
tion." If this step were taken, he said, the Presi- 
dency should be for life, or even hereditary. With 
some foresight of our later experience he added: 
"The officers, instead of being the machinery of the 
government, moving in regular order prescribed by 
the legislature, will be the mere puppets of the Presi- 
dent, to be employed or thrown aside as useless lum- 
ber according to his fancy." His arguments did not 
prevail; the clause was retained by a vote of 34 to 
20, and after some further modification the bill pass- 
ed by a small majority in the House, and by the 
casting vote of the Vice-president in the Senate. 
The result of that vote has not been followed by quite 
the evils that Page and Gerr}^ feared, but it has un- 
doubtedly influenced, as Madison predicted, the 
genius and character of the whole government. It is 
to be remembered that no prophetic vision had yet 
revealed to any one the vast future population for 
which Congress was legislating, and Madison plainly 
thought himself making a very bold guess when he 
estimated that it might "in some years" double in 
number, and reach six millions. 

On the 1 6th of July, 1790, Congress made up its 
mind to remove to the banks of the Potomac; but 
before the site was fixed upon, the seat of government 
was temporarily transferred (in November, 1790) to 
Philadelphia, then the largest town in the country 

308 



OUR COUNTRY'S CRADLE 

and claiming to be regarded as its metropolis. The 
French visitors criticised the city, found its rectangu- 
lar formation tiresome and the habits of its people 
sad; but Americans thought it gay and delightful. 
Brissot de Warville declared that the pretensions of 
the ladies were " too affected to be pleasing," and the 
Comte de Rochambeau said that the wives of mer- 
chants went to the extreme of French fashions. Mrs. 
John Adams, who had lived in Europe, complained 
of a want of etiquette, but found Philadelphia so- 
ciety eminently friendly and agreeable. Superior 
taste and a livelier wit were habitually claimed for 
the Philadelphia ladies. It was said by a vivacious 
maiden who went from that city to New York — 
Rebecca Franks, afterwards Lady Johnston — that 
the Philadelphia belles had "more cleverness in the 
turn of an eye than those of New York in their whole 
composition." In the latter city, she said, there was 
no conversation without the aid of cards; in Phila- 
delphia the chat never flagged. There were plenty 
of leading ladies. ]\Irs. Knox was still conspicuous, 
playing perpetual whist. Mrs. Bingham was the 
most charming of hostesses ; and among women com- 
ing from other parts of the country, and celebrated 
for character or beauty, were Mrs. Theodore Sedg- 
wick, of Massachusetts, and Mrs. Oliver Wolcott, of 
Litchfield, Connecticut. It was of the latter that 
the story is told that the British Minister said to 
Senator Tracy, of Connecticut: "Your countrywom- 
an would be admired at St. James's." "Sir," said 
the patriotic American, "she is admired even on 
Litchfield Hill." 

There was in Philadelphia a theatre which was 
much attended, and which must have had a rather 

309 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

exceptional company of actors for that period, inas- 
much as Chief -justice Jay assured his wife that it 
was composed of "decent, moral people." In so- 
ciety, habits were not always quite moral or con- 
versation always quite decent. Gentlemen, accord- 
ing to John Adams, sat till eleven o'clock over their 
after-dinner wine, and drank healths in that elabo- 
rate way which still amazes the American visitor in 
England. Nay, young ladies, if we may accept Miss 
Rebecca Franks as authority, drank each other's 
health out of punch tankards in the morning. Gam- 
bling prevailed among both sexes. It was not un- 
common to hear that a man or woman had lost three 
or four himdred dollars in an evening. An anony- 
mous letter- writer, quoted in Mr. Gris wold's Repub- 
lican Court, declares that some resident families could 
not have supported the cost of their entertainments 
and their losses at loo but that they had the adroit- 
ness to make the temporary residents pay their ex- 
penses. At balls people danced country-dances, the 
partners being designated beforehand by the host, 
and being usually unchanged during the whole even- 
ing — though " this severity was sometimes mitigated," 
in the language of the Marquis de Chastellux — and 
the supper was served about midnight. Talleyrand, 
in later years, looking back on the Philadelpliia of 
that period, found its luxury a theme for sarcasm in 
quality as well as quantity ; Leur luxe est affreux, he 
said. Going beyond the strict circles of fashion, we 
find that some social peculiarities which we regard 
as recent seem to have existed in full force at the very 
foundation of the republic. The aversion of white 
Americans to domestic service, the social freedom 
given to young girls, the habit of eating hot bread — 

310 



OUR COUNTRY'S CRADLE 

these form the constant theme of remark by the 
French visitors in the time of Washington. In some 
physiological matters American habits are now un- 
questionably modified for the better. Chastellux re- 
ports that at the best dinners of the period there was 
usually but one course besides the dessert; and Vol- 
ney describes people as drinking very strong tea im- 
mediately after this meal, and closing the evening 
with a supper of salt meat. At other points, again, 
the national traits seem to have been bcwilderingly 
transformed by the century that has since passed. 
The Chevalier de Beaujour describes Americans as 
usually having ruddy complexions, but without deli- 
cacy of feature or play of expression ; whereas all 
these characteristics will be found by the testimony 
of later travellers to be now precisely reversed, the 
features having grown delicate, the expression viva- 
cious, and the complexion pale. 

The standard of women's education was still low, 
and in society they had to rely on native talent and 
the conversation of clever men; yet Mercy Warren's 
history had been accepted as a really able work, and 
Phillis Wheatley's poems had passed for a phenom- 
enon. Mrs. Morton, of Massachusetts, also, under 
the name of " Philenia," had published a poem called 
" Beacon Hill," of which Robert Treat Paine, himself 
a man of ability, had written in this admiring strain : 

"Beacon shall live, the theme of future lays, 
Philenia bids; obsequious time obej^s. 
Beacon shall live, embalmed in verse sublime, 
The new Parnassus of a nobler clime." 

The original beacon has long since fallen; the hill 
to which it gave its name has been much cut down; 

311 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

and the fame of Philenia has been yet more sadly 
obHterated. Yet she and such as she undoubtedly 
contributed to the vague suspicions of monarchical 
design which began to array themselves against 
Washington. For did not these tuneful people write 
birthday odes to him; and were not birthday odes 
clearly monarchical? 

Great men are sometimes influenced by minor con- 
siderations. It is probable that Washington's de- 
sire to retire from the Presidency after one term was 
largely due to the public criticisms on such innocent 
things as these melodious flatteries and Mrs. Wash- 
ington's receptions. But he was still overwhelming- 
ly popular, and his re-election in 1792 was unani- 
mous. John Adams was again Vice - president, and 
the seat of government was still Philadelphia. It 
was thought at first by both Jefferson and Hamilton 
that the ceremony of a reinauguration should be a 
wholly private one at the President's house, but it 
was finally decided by the cabinet that it should be 
public and in the Senate chamber. Washington thus 
entered on a second term of office, which was destined 
to be far stormier than his first term. There were 
the Indian troubles to be settled, the whiskey insur- 
rection in Pennsylvania to be curbed, and the bal- 
ance of neutrality to be kept between France and 
England. The first two questions, though they seem- 
ed to belong to military matters alone, were yet com- 
plicated with politics, and the last was interwoven 
with the public affairs of all Europe. No President, 
except Abraham Lincoln, has ever yet had to deal 
with questions so difficult ; and it is to be remembered 
that Lincoln had behind him the aid of national tra- 
ditions already formed, while Washington dealt with 

312 



OUR COUNTRY'S CRADLE 

a newly organized government, and had to create 
even the traditions. 

The great scheme for filling the Northwestern Ter- 
ritory with settlers had seriously lagged. Great 
Britain still held her posts there ; this encouraged the 
Indian tribes which had never been included in the 
treaty of peace. It was at this time that Kentucky 
earned the name of the "dark and bloody ground," 
more than fifteen hundred of her pioneer settlers 
having been killed or captured within a few years. 
General Mercer was sent against the Indians with a 
small body of men in 1790, and was defeated; Gen- 
eral St. Clair was ordered out the following year, with 
a much larger force, and was beaten disastrously, 
losing nearly a thousand men and many cannon. 
Washington tried in vain to reach the Indians by 
treaty, and it took "Mad Anthony Wayne" and five 
thousand men to bring about peace at last. Near 
the site of what is now Cincinnati, Wayne made his 
winter camp in 1793; he built forts to strengthen his 
forw^ard march, and in August, 1794, fought the bat- 
tle of Maumee Rapids against Indians and Canadians 
with the aid of eleven hundred Kentucky volunteers. 
In this battle he completely and finally routed the 
Miami Indians, with a loss of but one hundred men, 
and within sight of a British fort; and he forced the 
enemy to cease hostilities. On August 3, 1 795, Wayne 
stood in presence of more than a thousand Indians 
at one of his forts, now Greenville, Ohio, and there 
made a treaty which put an end to the Indian wars. 
This, with the provisions of Jay's treaty with Eng- 
land, presently to be mentioned, flung open the west- 
ern country to the tide of settlers. 

The French Revolution, passing from its period of 

3^3 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

promise into its epoch of terror, had divided Ameri- 
can feeling as it had not before been sundered. This 
formidable French question had ceased to be a mere 
test of political sympathy; it was a matter of social 
feeling as well. England was the traditional enemy 
of the nation, France the traditional friend; yet 
France was causing horror to the world, while Eng- 
land stood for established order. Those who had 
tried to save the American experiment by keeping 
as near the English constitution as possible might 
well point to France as the example of the opposite 
method. Accordingly, the Federalists, who com- 
prised the wealthier and more prominent class of the 
nation, renewed their fidelity to the English traditions. 
They called the Democrats sans culottes, and regarded 
them not merely as belonging to the less educated 
and less dignified class — which was true — but as so- 
cially polluted and degraded. When the President's 
wife found that her granddaughter, Nelly Custis, had 
been receiving a guest in her absence, she asked who 
it was ; then noticing a stain where a head had rested 
against the straw-colored wall-paper, she exclaimed: 
"It was no Federalist: none but a filthy Democrat 
would mark the wall with his good-for-nothing head 
in that manner." Such remarks, when repeated from 
mouth to mouth, did not conduce to the amenities of 
life. 

Yet the good lad}'' had plenty of provocation. 
Much could be pardoned to a wife who had seen on 
printed handbills the coarse wood-cuts that repre- 
sented Washington as placed upon the guillotine like 
the French king. Such a caricature, when injudi- 
ciously shown by Knox to the President at a cabi- 
net meeting, drove him into " a transport of passion," 

314 



OUR COUNTRY'S CRADLE 

according to the not always trustworthy record of 
Jefferson; how, then, could his wife be indifferent to 
it ? There was really nothing serious to quarrel about 
in the home affairs of the country. The charge of 
monarchical tendencies amounted to nothing; the 
clear-headed Oliver Wolcott wrote that he could not 
find a man of sense who seriously believed it; and 
yet Washington was abused as if he carried a crown 
in his pocket. These attacks came most furiously 
from the poet Freneau in his National Gazette, es- 
tablished October 31, 1791; and Jefferson, in whose 
office Freneau was translating clerk, declared that 
this newspaper had saved the Constitution, which 
was "galloping fast into monarchy"; that it had 
"checked the career of the IMonocrats," and the like. 
Washington must have chafed all the more under these 
attacks because the editor, with persistent and pain- 
ful courtesy, sent him four copies of every issue — a 
refinement of cruelty such as our milder times can 
hardly parallel. 

All these troubles were exasperated by the arrival, 
on April 9, 1793, of the first envoy of the new French 
republic, M. Genet. He was received with a display 
of enthusiasm that might have turned any man's 
head, and his, apparently, needed no turning. His 
journey from Charleston, South Carolina, to Phila- 
delphia was like the reception of Lafayette; all the 
triumphant rights of man were supposed to be em- 
bodied in him, and the airs he took upon himself seem 
now incredible. He undertook to fit out privateers 
in American ports, and to bring prizes into those 
ports for condemnation by French consuls ; and when 
Washington checked this impertinence, he threatened 
to appeal from Washington to the people. The na- 

315 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

tion was instantly divided into two parties, and what- 
ever extravagances the French sympathizers might 
commit the Federalists doubled them in imagination. 
They sincerely believed that all sorts of horrors were 
transacted at the banquets given to Genet; that the 
guests in turn wore the red revolutionary cap — the 
bonnet rouge; that a roasted pig received the name 
of the slain king of France, and that the severed 
head was offered in turn to each guest, who exclaim- 
ed, theatrically, "Tyrant!" and struck it with his 
knife. These stories may have been chiefly false, 
but they produced as much effect as if they had been 
true. On the other hand. Genet behaved so foolishly 
and insolently that Jefferson had to abandon his 
cause. "If our citizens," he wrote, "have not al- 
ready been shedding each other's blood, it is not 
owing to the moderation of Mr. Genet." Jefferson 
himself assented to Washington's proclamation of 
neutrality (April 22, 1793), though he rejoiced that 
it was not issued under that precise name. Indeed, 
throughout the excitement, Jefferson seems to have 
contributed only the needful influence to do justice 
to the French view of the question, and was less 
extravagant in that way than Hamilton on the other 
side. 

But after all these extravagances, real or reputed, 
it was natural that every outbreak should be charged 
to the "democratic societies." Washington thought 
that they instigated the Whiskey Insurrection which 
arose in Pennsylvania in 1794 against the excise laws 
-an insurrection which denounced such laws as ' ' the 
horror of all free States," and went so far as to threat- 
en separation from the Union. It was Hamilton who 
had framed the law which caused the revolt, and 

316 



() U R C O U N T R \' ' S C R A D L E 

lianiiltoii coiitribuLed the adniinihlc su^'gcstion \)y 
which it was quelled. His plan was to call out st) 
large a force as instantly to overawe the insurrection 
and crush it without firing a shot. Washington ac- 
cordingly summoned out 13,000 militia, and the work 
was done. Unfortunately, it led to the reaction which 
usually follows a complete strategic success — people 
turn round and say that there never was any danger. 
The most skilful victories even in war are the blood- 
less ones, but it is apt to be bloodshed alone that 
wins laurels. It happened thus in this case. Jeffer- 
son declared the affair to have been merely a riot, 
and not nearly so bad as the excise law which created 
it; he held to the theory which he had announced 
during Shays' s rebellion, that an occasional popular 
commotion was a good remedy for too much govern- 
ment. 

Jay's treaty with England (November 19, _ 1794) 
was the turning-point of the personal popularity of 
Washington. From that time a large and increas- 
ing minority opposed the President w4th all the bit- 
terness of the period— that is, furiously. The treaty 
secured the withdrawal of the British garrisons from 
the northwest, and it guaranteed payment from the 
British treasury for all illegal captures — ^a payment 
that amounted to ten millions of dollars. So far it 
might have been popular, but it provided also for the 
payment of all debts owed before the Revolution by 
Americans to British subjects, and this would have 
been enough to make it unpalatable. But it also 
had to encounter the rising sympathy for France, 
and this led to the most vehement opposition. The 
indignation against it broke out in mobs. Jay was 
burned or hanged in effigy in several cities; Adams 

317 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

was in one case hanged beside him, with a purse of 
English guineas in his hand; and the treaty itself 
was burned in Philadelphia by a mob of ten thousand 
people, before the windows of the British Minister. 
Hamilton, in speaking for it at a public meeting in 
New York, was assailed by a volley of stones. " Gen- 
tlemen," he said, "if you use such strong arguments, 
I must retire." But he only retired to write a series 
of papers in defence of the treaty, which was ratified 
in June, 1795, by just the needful two - thirds vote 
after a fortnight of discussion. 

We think of those times as purer than the present ; 
yet the perennial moaning over the decline of the re- 
public had already begun in the first decade of its 
existence. Fauchet, the French Minister who suc- 
ceeded Genet, declared, truly or falsely, that Ed- 
mund Randolph, who was at first Attorney-general, 
but h^d now succeeded Jefferson as Secretary of 
State, had come to him and asked for a bribe to es- 
pouse the French side. "Thus," said the indignant 
Frenchman, "the consciences of the pretended pa- 
triots of America have already their prices. What 
will be the old age of this government if it is thus 
already decrepit!" And as to poHtical violence, the 
habitual abuse of Washington went on increasing; 
the Democratic Republicans spoke of him habitually 
in their private meetings as "Montezuma"; they al- 
lowed him neither uprightness, nor pecuniary honesty, 
nor military ability, nor even personal courage. He 
himself wrote that every act of his administration 
was tortured, and the grossest misrepresentations 
made "in such exaggerated and indecent terms as 
could scarcely be applied to a Nero, to a notorious 
defaulter, or even to a common pickpocket." 

318 



OUR COUNTRY'S CRADLE 

His farewell address was made public in September, 
1796, and he met Congress December 7th for the 
last time. The electoral votes, as coimted by the 
Senate in the following February (1797), showed 
John Adams, of Massachusetts, to have the highest 
number, and he was declared President-elect; while 
Jefferson, who had the next number, was pronounced 
to be the Vice-president-elect, according to a con- 
stitutional provision since altered. On his last day 
in office Washington wrote to Knox comparing him- 
self to "the weary traveller w^ho sees a resting-place, 
and is bending his body to lean thereon. To be suf- 
fered to do this in peace," he added, "is too much to 
be endured by some." Accordingly, on that very day 
a Philadelphia newspaper dismissed him with a final 
tirade, whose wild folly is worth remembering by all 
who think that political virulence is on the increase : 

" ' Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace, for 
mine eyes have seen Thy salvation!' This was the exclama- 
tion of a man who saw a flood of blessedness breaking in 
upon mankind. If ever there was a time that allowed this 
exclamation to be repeated, that time is the present. The 
man who is the source of all our country's misery is this 
day reduced to the rank of his fellow - citizens, and has 
no longer the power to multiply the woes of these United 
States. Now more than ever is the time to rejoice. Every 
heart which feels for the liberty and happiness of the peo- 
ple must now beat with rapture at the thought that this 
day the name of Washington ceases to give currency to in- 
justice and to legalize corruption. . . . When we look back 
upon the eight years of Washington's administration, it 
strikes us with astonishment that one man could thus poison 
the principles of republicanism among our enlightened peo- 
ple, and carry his designs against the public liberty so far 
as to endanger its very existence. Yet such is the fact, and 
if this is apparent to all, this day should form a jubilee in 
the United States." 

319 



XIV 

THE EARLY AMERICAN PRESIDENTS 

AN acute foreign observer said well, in the days 
L when John ildams was President, that there 
seemed to be in the United States many Englishmen, 
many Frenchmen, but very few Americans. The 
reason was that the French Revolution really drew a 
red-hot ploughshare through the history of America 
as well as through that of France. It not merely 
divided parties, but moulded them: gave them their 
demarcations, their watchwords, and their bitterness. 
The home issues were for a time subordinate, collater- 
al; the real party lines were established on the other 
side of the Atlantic. 

Up to the time when the Constitution was formed, 
it is curious to see that France was only the friend of 
the young nation, not its political counsellor. The 
proof of this is that, in the debates which formed the 
Constitution, France was hardly mentioned; the au- 
thorities, the illustrations, the analogies, were almost 
all EngHsh. Yet the leading statesmen of the period 
— Franklin, Jay, Adams, Jefferson — had been resi- 
dent in Paris as diplomatists; and Hamilton was of 
French descent on the mother's side. . France, how- 
ever, gave them no model for imitation ; the frame of 
government, where it w^as not English, was simply 
American. A few years more, and all was changed; 

^20 



THE EARLY AMERICAN PRESIDENTS 

in America, as in Europe, the French Revolution was 
the absorbing theme. The American newspapers of 
the day existed mainly to give information about 
foreign affairs; and they really gave more space to 
France than to their ow^n country. They told some- 
thing about the wrongs of the French people, though 
few besides Jefferson took them seriously to heart. 
They told a great deal about the horrors of the out- 
break, and here men divided. American political 
parties were for many years embittered by the tra- 
ditions of that great division. 

Those who had always distrusted the masses of the 
people inevitably began to distrust them more than 
ever. They read Burke's Reflections on the French 
Revolution, they read Canning's editorials, and they 
attributed the French excesses to innate depravity, 
to atheism, to madness. Let the people have its own 
way, they argued, and it will always wish to cut oft' 
the heads of the better classes or swing them up to 
the street-lantern. Those who thus reasoned were 
themselves the better classes, in the ordinary sense; 
they were the clergy, the lawyers, the planters, the 
merchants — the men who had, or thought they had, 
the largest stake in the country. The Frenchmen 
they had seen were the young men of rank and fort- 
une who had helped America to fight through the 
Revolution — generous, high-souled, joyous young 
soldiers, of whom Lafayette was the conspicuous 
type. Of the same class were the Frenchmen who 
had visited America since the Revolution; who had 
been pleased with everything and had flattered every- 
body. The handsome Count Fersen, who had charm- 
ed all hearts at Newport, was the very man who had, 
in the disguise of a coachman, driven the French King 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

and Queen in their escape from Paris. Lauzun, the 
brilliant commander of French cavalry under Rocham^ 
beau, was also the picturesque hero who refused to 
have his hands tied on ascending the guillotine, but 
said gayly to the executioner, "We are both French- 
men; we shall do our duty." Who could help sym- 
pathizing with these fine young fellows? But this 
revolutionist in the red cap, this Jacques with wood- 
en shoes, these knitting women, these terrible trico- 
teuses, the Federalists had not seen ; and doubtless 
the nearer they had seen them the less they would 
have liked them. Consequently, like Burke, they 
"pitied the plumage, but forgot the dying bird." 
To them everything French was now pernicious ; the 
Reign of Terror was not much worse than was the 
career of those more moderate revolutionists who re- 
sisted that terror or fell beneath it. The opinions 
of this party were best represented by that cele- 
brated periodical, the Anti- Jacobin, now chiefly re- 
membered by Canning's best -known poem, "The 
Needy Knife-Grinder." But the Anti-Jacobin lashed 
every grade of Frenchman and Frenchwoman with 
equal bitterness, if they took the side of the people; 
assailed Madame Roland and Madame de Stael as 
coarsely as it denounced Robespierre or Dan ton. The 
American Federalists held the same attitude. 

To look below the surface of the French Revolu- 
tion, to see in it the righting of a vast wrong, to find 
in that wrong some explanation of its very excesses, 
this view — now so generally accepted — was confined 
to a very few of the leaders : Jefferson, Samuel Adams, 
Albert Gallatin. Here, as is usual, the reformer found 
secret affinities with the demagogue. It is easier for 
the demagogue than for any one else to pose for a 

322 



THE EARLY AMERICAN PRESIDENTS 

time as a reformer, and even to be mistaken for one ; 
and on the other hand the reformer is ahvays tempt- 
ed to make excuses for the demagogue, since he himi- 
self has usually to wage war against the respectable 
classes. Some men were Federalists because they 
were high-minded, others because they were narrow- 
minded; while the more far-sighted, and also the 
less scrupulous, became Democrats — or, in the orig- 
inal name, Republicans. They used this last term 
not in the rather vague sense of current Ameri- 
can politics, but in a much more definite manner. 
In calling themselves Republicans, they sincerely be- 
lieved that nobody else wished well to the republic. 
Thus the party lines which we should have expected 
to find drawn simply on American questions were in 
fact almost wholly controlled by European politics. 
The Federalists were in sympathy with England ; the 
Democrats, or Republicans, with France; and this 
determined the history of the nation, its treaties and 
its parties, through a series of administrations. 

The Federalist President-elect was John Adams — 
a man of great pith and vigor, whose letters and 
diaries are more racy than those of any man of that 
day, though his more elaborate writings are apt to 
be prolix and dull, like those of the others. He was 
a self-made man, as people say, and one who had a 
strong natural taste for rank and ceremony; even 
having, as John Randolph complained, "arms em- 
blazoned on the 'scutcheon of the vice-regal car- 
riage." The more he held to this aristocratic posi- 
tion, the more people remarked his original want of 
it ; and there have lived within half a century in Bos- 
ton old ladies who still habitually spoke of him as 
"that cobbler's son." But he was a man, moreover, 

323 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

of extraordinary sense and courage, combined with 
an explosive temper and a decided want of tact. 
He had at first the public sentiment of New England 
behind him, and a tolerably united party. Having 
been Vice-president under Washington, he seemed 
to be the natural successor ; and the peculiar arrange- 
ment then prevailing, by which the Vice-president 
was not voted for as a distinct officer, but was simply 
the Presidential candidate who stood second on the 
list, led to many complications of political manoeuvr- 
ing, the result of which was that John Adams had 71 
electoral votes, and became President, while Thomas 
JefEerson had 68 votes, and took the next place, 
greatly to his discontent. Adams and Jefferson were 
quite as inappropriately brought together in execu- 
tive office as were Jefferson and Hamilton in the 
cabinet of Washington. 

Abigail Adams, the President's wife, was undoubt- 
edly the most conspicuous American woman of her 
day, whether by position or by character. When 
writing to her husband she often signed herself 
"Portia," in accordance with a stately and perhaps 
rather high-flown habit of the period; and she cer- 
tainly showed qualities which would have done hon- 
or to either the Roman or Shakespearian heroine of 
that name. In her letters we see her thoroughly re- 
vealed. While the battle of Bunker Hill was in 
progress, she wrote that it was " dreadful but glori- 
ous"; and in the depression of the battle of Long Isl- 
and she said, " If all America is to be ruined and un- 
done by a pack of cowards and knaves, I wish to 
know it," and added, "Don't you know me better 
than to think me a coward?" When, first among 
American women, she represented her nation at the 

324 



THE EARLY A M I^: R 1 C A X P R E S I U i: X T S 

court of St. James, she met with equal pride the con- 
temptuous demeanor of (Jueen Charlotte ; and when 
her husband was chosen President, she wrote to him : 
" My feelings are not those of pride or ostentation 
upon the occasion; they are solemnized by a sense 
of the obligations, the important truths and numer- 
ous duties, connected with it." When finally, after 
four years, he failed of re-election, she wrote to her 
son: "The consequence to us is personally that we 
retire from public life. For myself and family I have 
few regrets. ... If I did not rise with dignity, I can 
at least fall with ease." This was Abigail Adams. 
In person she was distinguished and noble rather 
than beautiful, yet it is satisfactory to know that 
when she was first presented at the British court she 
wore a white lutestring, trimmed \vith white crape, 
festooned with lilac ribbon and mock point-lace over 
a hoop of enormous extent, w'ith a narrow train three 
yards long, looped up by a ribbon. She wore treble 
lace ruffles, a dress cap with long lace lappets, and 
tw^o white plumes, these last doubtless soaring straight 
into the air above her head in the extraordinary style 
familiar to us in Gillray's caricatures of that period. 

It was in those days no very agreeable task to be 
the wife of the President. Mrs. Adams has left on 
record a graphic sketch of the White House, where 
she presided for three months. The change in the 
seat of government had been decided upon for tW'clve 
years, yet the building was still a vast, unfinished 
barrack, with few rooms plastered, no main stairway, 
not a bell within, not a fence without; it w^as distress- 
ingly cold in winter, while the Chief Magistrate of 
the United States could not obtain for love or money 
a man to cut wood for him in the forests which then 

325 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

surrounded Washington. From Washington to Balti- 
more extended an almost unbroken growth of timber, 
varied only by some small and windowless huts. There 
could as yet be in Washington no such varied com- 
panionship as had given attraction to the seat of 
government at New York and then at Philadelphia; 
yet at Georgetown there was a society which called 
itself eminently polite, and Mrs. Adams records that 
she returned fifteen calls in a single day. 

Adams took his cabinet from his predecessor; it 
was not a strong one, and it was devoted to Hamil- 
ton, between whom and the new President there was 
soon a divergence, Hamilton being fond of power, 
and Adams having a laudable purpose to command 
his own ship. The figure of speech is appropriate, 
for he plunged into a sea of troubles, mainly created 
by the unreasonable demands of the French govern- 
ment. The French "Directory," enraged especially 
by Jay's treaty with England, got rid of one Ameri- 
can Minister by remonstrance and drove out an- 
other with contempt. When Adams sent three special 
envoys, they were expected to undertake the most 
delicate negotiations with certain semi-ofBcial persons 
designated in their published correspondence only by 
the letters X, Y, Z. The plan of this covert inter- 
course came through the private secretary of M. de 
Talleyrand, then French Minister for Foreign Affairs; 
and the impudence of these three letters of the al- 
phabet went so far as to propose a bribe of 1,200,000 
francs (some $220,000) to be paid over to this Min- 
ister. * ' You must pay money, a great deal of money, ' ' 
remarked Monsieur Y (// faut de Vargent, heaucoup 
de Vargent). The secret of these names was kept, 
but the diplomatic correspondence was made public, 

326 



THE EARLY AMERICAN PRESIDENTS 

and created much wrath in Europe as well as in 
America. Moreover, American vessels were constant- 
ly attacked by France, and yet Congress refused to 
arm its own ships. At last the insults passed beyond 
bearing, and it was at this time that " Millions for 
defence, not one cent for tribute," first became a 
proverbial phrase, having been originally used by 
Charles C. Pinckney, who, after having been expelled 
from France, was sent back again as one of the three 
envoys. 

Then, with tardy decision, the RepubHcans yielded 
to the necessity of action, and the Federal party took 
the lead. War was not formally proclaimed, but trea- 
ties with France were declared to be no longer binding. 
An army was ordered to be created, with Washing- 
ton as lieutenant-general and Hamilton as second in 
command ; and the President was authorized to ap- 
point a Secretary of the Navy and to build twelve 
new ships-of-war. Before these were ready, naval 
hostilities had actually begun ; and Commodore Trux- 
tun, m the U. S. frigate Constellation, captured a 
French frigate in West Indian waters (February 9, 
1799), and afterwards silenced another, which how- 
ever escaped. Great was the excitement over these 
early naval successes of the yoimg nation. Merchant- 
ships were authorized to arm themselves, and some 
three hundred acted upon this authority. It is to 
this period, and not, as is commonly supposed, to that 
of the Revolution, that Robert Treat Paine's song 
"Adams and Liberty" belongs. The result of it all 
was that France yielded. Talleyrand, the very Min- 
ister who had inspired the insults, now disavowed 
them, and pledged his government to receive any 
Minister the United States might send. The Presi- 

327 



HISTORY O I-^ '1^ HI' UNITED ST A T E S 

dent, in the most eminently courageous act of his 
life, took the responsibility of again sending ambassa- 
dors; and did this without even consulting his cabi- 
net, which would, as he well knew, oppose it. They 
were at once received, and all danger of war with 
France was at an end. 

This bold stroke separated the President perma- 
nently from at least half of his own party, since the 
Federalists did not wish for peace with France. His 
course would have given him a corresponding in- 
crease of favor from the other side, but for the great 
mistake the Federalists had made in passing certain 
laws, especially the "Alien" law and the "Sedition" 
law; the first of these giving the President power to 
order any dangerous alien out of the country, and the 
second making it a penal offence to write anything 
false, scandalous, or malicious against the President or 
Congress. It was held, most justly, that this last law 
was directly opposed to the Constitution, which had 
been so amended as to guarantee freedom to the press. 
Looked at from this distance, it seems to have been 
one of those measures which inevitably destroy a 
party; and the Federalists certainly committed sui- 
cide when they passed it. It is clear that if it had 
stood, their own ablest newspapers four years after 
— Dennie's Portfolio, for instance — might have seen 
their proprietors imprisoned. These laws led to ac- 
tion almost equally extreme on the other side; the 
Republicans, powerless in Congress, fell back on their 
State legislatures, and Kentucky and Virginia pass- 
ed resolutions — draughted respectively by Jefferson 
and Madison — which went so near secession as to be 
quoted on that side at a later day. Kentucky dis- 
tinctly resolved in 1799 that any State might right- 

328 



THE EARLY AMERICAN PRESIDENTS 

fully nullify any act of Congress which it regarded as 
unconstitutional. 

Thus the bitterness grew worse and worse, till 
Adams dismissed from his cabinet the friends of 
Hamilton, calling them a "British faction." Ham- 
ilton, in turn, intrigued against Adams, and in 1800 
the vote of South Carolina turned the scale in favor 
of the Republican electors. Jefferson and Burr, the 
two Republican nominees, had an equal number of 
votes — 73 ; Adams having 65, Pinckney 64, and Jay i. 
There was no choice, and the decision then went to 
the House of Representatives, which took six days 
to make its election, during which time the Constitu- 
tion underwent such a party strain as has only once 
been equalled since that period. It ended in the 
election of Thomas Jefferson as President and of 
Aaron Burr as Vice-president, and on March 4, 1801, 
they were sworn into office. 

On the very day of his inauguration Jefferson took 
a step towards what he called simplicity, and what 
his opponents thought vulgarity. The story that, 
instead of driving with a coach-and-six to be inau- 
gurated, the new President rode on horseback to the 
Capitol, without even a servant, tied his horse to 
the fence, and walked in, has been discredited; but 
such an incident would have been characteristic. 
In the same way, thenceforward, instead of going with 
a state procession, at the opening of each Congress, to 
read his message in person, as had hitherto been the 
custom, he sent it in writing. He would have no 
especial levees nor invited guests, but was accessible 
to any one at any hour. He was so unwilling to have 
his birthday celebrated that he concealed it as much 
as possible. These ways were criticised as those of a 

aa 329 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

demagogue. The President was reproached with a 
desire to conciliate the mob, or, as it was then some- 
times called — as, for instance, in Mrs. Adams's letters 
— the " mobility." His reason for sending a message, 
according to that stout Federalist William Sullivan, 
was because a speech could be answered and a mes- 
sage could not ; although Sullivan asserts, in almost 
the next sentence, that Congress was utterly sub- 
servient to him, and it could therefore have made 
no difference. The discontinuance of formal levees 
is called by Sullivan "the abolition of all official dig- 
nity," and "descending to the lowest level." 

Dennie's Portfolio, the best newspaper that had yet 
appeared in the United States, contained, August i8, 
1804, among eulogies of the poems of Burns and 
burlesques upon the early lyrical effusions of Words- 
worth, an imaginary diary, supposed to have been 
picked up near the White House in the previous Feb- 
ruary. In this the President was made to say: " Or- 
dered my horse — never ride with a servant — looks 
proud — mob doesn't like it — must gull the boobies. 
Adams wouldn't bend so — would rather lose his place 
— knew nothing of the world." In another place he 
describes himself as meeting a countryman who took 
him for a Virginia overseer, and who talked politics. 
The countryman asked him to name one man of real 
character in the Democratic party. The President, 
after some stammering, suggested Jefferson, on which 
the coimtryman burst into a broad laugh, and asked 
him to enumerate his virtues — would he begin with 
his religion, chastity, courage, or honesty? — on 
which the President indignantly rode away. "Had 
he been as little as Sammy H. Smith," he adds, "I 
think I should have struck him." Ever since Jeffer- 



THE EARLY AMERICAN PRESIDENTS 

son's career as Governor of Virginia, the charge of 
personal cowardice had been unreasonably familiar. 

The fictitious diary also contains some indecorous 
references to a certain "black Sally," a real or im- 
aginary personage of that day whose companionship 
was thought discreditable to the President; also to 
the undoubted personal slovenliness of the Chief 
Magistrate — a point in which he showed an almost 
studied antagonism to the scrupulous proprieties of 
Washington. When Merry, the newly appointed 
British ambassador, went in official costume to be 
presented to the President at an hour previously ap- 
pointed, he found himself, by his own narrative, "in- 
troduced to a man as the President of the United 
States, not merely in an undress, but actually stand- 
ing in slippers down at the heels, and both pantaloons, 
coat, and underclothes indicative of utter slovenliness 
and indifference to appearance, and in a state of neg- 
ligence actually studied." The Minister went away 
with the very natural conviction that the whole scene 
was prepared and intended as an insult, not to him- 
self, but to the sovereign whom he represented. 

Merry's inference was probably quite imjust. A 
man may be habitually careless about his costume 
without meaning any harm by it; and the pre-emi- 
nent demagogue of the French Revolution, Robes- 
pierre, always appeared exquisitely dressed, and wore 
a fresh bouquet every day. Yet all these points of 
costume or propriety were then far weightier matters 
than we can now conceive. The habits of the last 
century in respect to decorum were just receding; 
men were — for better or worse — ceasing to occupy 
themselves about personal externals, and the "cus- 
tomary suit of solemn black" was only just coming 

33^ 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

into vogue. The old regime was dying, and its dis- 
appearance was as conspicuous in England as in 
France, in America as in England. This is easily- 
illustrated. 

If we were to read in some old collection of faded 
letters a woman's animated description of a country 
visit paid to one who seemed the counterpart of Ad- 
dison's Sir Roger de Coverley, we should naturally 
assume that the date and address of the letter must 
be very far away in space and time. Suppose that 
the narrator should tell us of a fine country-house 
surrounded by lofty elms forming two avenues, the 
one leading to the high-road, the other to the village 
church. There are family portraits in the hall, 
bookcase containing the first edition of the Spectator, 
and a buffet of old plate and rare china. The guest 
remains over Sunday, and her host, wearing wig and 
cocked hat and red cloak, escorts her down the avenue 
of elms through the rural church-yard to the village 
church. At every step they pass villagers who make 
profound obeisance, and at the conclusion of the ser- 
vice the whole congregation remains standing until 
this ancient gentleman and his friends have passed 
down the broad aisle. Who would not fancy this a 
scene from some English hamlet in the days of Queen 
Anne ? Yet it all took place in the last century, and 
in the quiet village of Harvard, Massachusetts, little 
more than thirty miles from Boston, and noted as 
the abode of a little Shaker community, and the scene 
of Howells's Undiscovered Country. The narrator 
was the late Mrs. Josiah Quincy, and her host was 
Henry Bromfield, elder brother of the well-known 
benefactor of the Boston Athenaeum. He was simply 
a "survival" of the old way of living. He spoke of 

332 



THE EARLY AMERICAN PRESIDENTS 

State Street as King Street and Summer Street as 
Seven-star Lane, and his dress and manners were like 
his phrases. Such survivals were still to be found, 
here and there all over the country, at the precise 
time when Jefferson became President and shocked 
Merry with his morning slippers and Sullivan by 
opening his doors to all the world. 

For the rest, Jefferson's way of living in Washing- 
ton exhibited a profuse and rather slovenly hospital- 
ity, which at last left him deeply in debt. He kept 
open house, had eleven servants (slaves) from his 
plantation, besides a French cook and steward and 
an Irish coachman. His long dining-room was crowd- 
ed every day, according to one witness, who tested 
its hospitality for sixteen days in succession; it was 
essentially a bachelor establishment, he being then a 
widower, and we hear little of ladies among his visit- 
ors. There was no etiquette at these great dinners ; 
they sat down at four and talked till midnight. The 
city of Washington was still a frontier settlement, in 
that phase of those outposts when they consist of 
many small cabins and one hotel at which everybody 
meets. The White House was the hotel; there was 
no "society" anywhere else, because no other dwell- 
ing had a drawing-room large enough to receive it. 
Pennsylvania Avenue was still an abyss of yellow 
mud, on which nobody could walk and where car- 
riages were bemired. Gouverneur Morris, of New 
York, described Washington as the best city in the 
world for a future residence. " We want nothing 
here," he said, "but houses, cellars, kitchens, well- 
informed men, amiable women, and other little trifles 
of this kind, to make our city perfect." 

Besides new manners, the new President urged new 

333 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

measures; he would pay off the public debt, which 
was very well, though the main instrument by which 
it was to be paid was the Treasury system created by 
Hamilton. But to aid in doing this, he would reduce 
the army and navy to their lowest point, which was 
not so well, although he covered this reduction in the 
case of the army by calling it — in a letter to Nathaniel 
Macon — " a chaste reformation." He pardoned those 
convicted under the Alien and Sedition laws, and he 
procured the removal of those officers appointed by 
President Adams at the last moment, and called 
"Midnight Judges," this being accomplished by a 
repeal of the law creating them. This repeal was an 
act which seemed to the Federalists unconstitutional, 
and its passage was their last great defeat. Under 
Jefferson's leadership the period of fourteen years of 
residence necessary for naturalization was reduced to 
five years. He sent Lewis and Clark to penetrate 
the vast regions west of the Mississippi, and encour- 
aged Astor to found a settlement upon the Pacific 
coast. The Constitution was so amended as to pro- 
vide for the Presidential election in its present form. 
The President's hostility could not touch the Bank 
of the United States, as estabhshed by Hamilton, for 
it was to exist by its charter till 1811 ; the excise law 
was early discontinued; the tariff question had not 
yet become serious, the tendency being, however, to 
an increase of duties. Slavery was occasionally dis- 
cussed by pamphleteers. The officials of the civil 
service had not grown to be a vast army : instead of 
fifty thousand, there were then but five thousand, 
and of those Jefferson removed but thirty-nine. Yet 
even this mild degree of personal interference was 
severely criticised, for party bitterness had not 

334 



THE EARLY AMERICAN PRESIDENTS 

abated. Violent squibs and handbills were still pub- 
lished; peaceful villages were divided against them- 
selves. The late Catharine Sedgwick, whose father 
was Speaker of the House of Representatives, says 
that in a New England town, where she lived in 
childhood, the gentry who resided at one end were 
mainly Federalists, and the poorer citizens at the 
other end were Democrats. The travelling agent for 
the exchange of political knowledge was a certain 
aged horse, past service, and turned out to graze in 
the village street. He would be seen peacefully pac- 
ing one way in the morning, his sides plastered with 
Jeffersonian squibs, and he would return at night with 
these effaced by Federalist manifestoes. 

Handbills and caricatures have alike disappeared; 
but one of the best memorials of the Jeffersonian side 
of the controversy is to be found in a very spicy cor- 
respondence carried on in 1807 between John Adams 
and Mercy Warren, and first published in the cen- 
tennial volume of the Massachusetts Historical So- 
ciety. Mercy Warren was a woman of rare ability 
and character, the sister of James Otis, the wife of 
General James Warren, and the author of a history 
of the American Revolution. John Adams, reading 
this book after his retirement from office, took offence 
at certain phrases, and corresponded with her at 
great length about them, showing in advancing years 
an undiminished keenness of mind and only an in- 
crease of touchy egotism. He makes it, for instance, 
a subject of sincere indignation when the lady in one 
case speaks of Franklin and Adams instead of Adams 
and Franklin. Mrs. Warren, on her side, shows to 
the greatest advantage, keeps her temper, and gives 
some keen home-thrusts. She makes it clear, in this 

335 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

correspondence, how strongly and indeed justly a 
portion of the most intelligent people of Adams's 
own State dreaded what she calls his "marked and 
uniform preference to monarchic usages"; she brings 
him to the admission that he hates "democratic" 
government, and likes better such republicanism as 
that of Holland — a nation which, as he himself says, 
"has no idea of any republic but an aristocracy" — 
and that he counts even England a republic, since a 
republic is merely "a government of more than one." 
She even quotes against him his own words, uttered 
in moments of excited impulse, recognizing mon- 
archy as the probable destiny of the United States. 
But the most striking fact, after all, is that she, a re- 
fined and cultivated woman, accustomed to the best 
New England society of her time, is found dissenting 
wholly from the Federalist view of Jefferson. "I 
never knew," she bravely says, in answer to a sneer 
from Mr. Adams, "that 'my philosophical friend' 
Mr. Jefferson was afraid to do his duty in any instance. 
But this I know — he has dared to do many things 
for his country for which posterity will probably bless 
his memory; and I hope he will yet, by his wisdom, 
justice, moderation, and energy, long continue the 
blessings of peace in our country, and strengthen the 
republican system to which he has uniformly ad- 
hered." Such a tribute from a woman like Mercy 
Warren — a woman then nearly eighty years old, but 
still showing unimpaired those mental powers of 
which John Adams had before spoken in terms of al- 
most extravagant praise — is entitled to count for 
something against the bitterness of contemporary 
politicians. 

There were now sixteen States, Vermont (1791), 

336 



THE EARLY AMERICAN PRESIDENTS 

Kentucky (1792), Tennessee (1796) having been add- 
ed to the original thirteen. With these was soon as- 
sociated Ohio (1802), and then no other was added 
until a vast acquisition of territory made it neces- 
sary. This was the province of Louisiana, which was 
obtained by Jefferson through one of those strokes 
of glaring inconsistency which his opponents called 
trick and his admirers statesmanship. Monroe had 
been sent to France to buy the Floridas and the isl- 
and of New Orleans, but he went beyond his instruc- 
tions, and paid fifteen millions (April 30, 1803) for all 
the vast region then called Louisiana, comprising the 
island of New Orleans and all the continent west of 
the Mississippi River between the British possessions 
and what was then Mexico. The territory thus ob- 
tained was afterwards assumed to have extended to 
the Pacific Ocean, although this was a claim subject 
to much doubt. It was a most important acquisition 
which more than doubled the original area of the 
United States, and saved it from being hemmed in 
between English Canada and French Florida. But 
here was a test of those rigid doctrines with which 
Jefferson was identified — of State rights and the strict 
construction of the Constitution. If the resolutions 
which he had drawn up for the State of Kentucky were 
true, then the purchase of Louisiana was WTong, for 
it was the exercise of a power not given by the Con- 
stitution, and it strengthened the nation enormously 
at the expense of the original States. Jeflerson sus- 
tained it simply on the ground that the people needed 
it, and if they did so, a constitutional amendment 
would set all right. In other words, he violated 
what he himself had declared to be law, and suggested 
that a new law be passed to confirm his action. The 

337 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

new law — in the shape of an amendment to the Con- 
stitution — was, in fact, prepared, but never even offer- 
ed, inasmuch as the popular voice ratified the purchase. 
Thus a precedent was created — that of the annexa- 
tion of new territory — which was in accordance with 
Jefferson's immediate policy, but was fatal to his prin- 
ciples. The acquisition of Louisiana aided greatly in 
bringing about just that which he had opposed, the 
subordination of the States to the nation. 

These things would have made enough of party 
bitterness, but what added to it was that politics still 
turned largely on European politics, and every fresh 
foreign newspaper added to the democratic flame. 
It was now France with which a treaty was to be 
made, and the debate ran almost as high as when 
Jay had negotiated with England, only that the ar- 
guments of the disputants were now reversed. But 
here, -as in everything during Jefferson's earlier pe- 
riod, success awaited him. The French treaty was at 
length ratified ; the Federalists were defeated all along 
the line. At the end of Jefferson's first term they 
were overwhelmingly beaten in the Presidential elec- 
tion, carrying only Connecticut and Delaware, with 
two electors in Maryland — 14 electoral votes in all. 
Their unsuccessful candidates were Charles C. Pinck- 
ney and Rufus King; the successful ones were Thomas 
Jefferson, of Virginia, and George Clinton, of New 
York, both having 162 electoral votes, and Clinton 
taking the place of Aaron Burr, the most brilliant 
man of his time, who had now fallen from all public 
respect by his way of life, had made himself odious 
by killing Hamilton in a duel, and was destined to 
come near conviction for treason through his project 
of setting up a separate government at the South- 

338 



THE EARLY AMERICAN PRESIDENTS 

west. The new President and Vice-president were 
sworn into office March 4, 1805. They had behind 
them a strong majority in each House of Congress, 
and henceforth the FederaHst party was only a mi- 
nority, able and powerful, but destined to death. 

Under the new administration the controlling effect 
of European strife was more and more felt in Ameri- 
can affairs. Napoleon's "Decrees" and the British 
"Orders in Council" were equally disastrous to the 
commerce of the United States; and both nations 
claimed the right to take seamen out of United States 
vessels. "England," said Jefferson, "seems to have 
become a den of pirates and France a den of thieves." 
There was trouble with Spain also, backed by France, 
about the eastern boundaries of Louisiana. There 
was renewed demand for a navy, but the President 
would only consent to the building of certain little 
gun-boats, much laughed at then and ever since. 
They were to cost less than ten thousand dollars 
apiece, were to be kept on land under cover, and to 
be launched whenever they were needed, like the 
boats of our life-saving service ; with these the fleets 
which had fought under Nelson were to be resisted. 
Yet a merely commercial retaliation was favored 
by Jefferson; and an act was passed to punish Eng- 
land by the prohibition of certain English goods. A 
treaty with that nation was made, but was rejected 
by the President, and all tended to increase the bitter- 
ness of feeling between the two nations. In June, 
1807, the British frigate Leopard took four seamen 
by force from the United States frigate Chesapeake. 
" Never since the battle of Lexington," said Jefferson, 
" have I seen this country in such a state of exaspera- 
tion as at present." 

339 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

Then came that great poHtical convulsion, the 
Embargo Act (December 22, 1807), prohibiting all 
commerce with all foreign countries, and thus in- 
stantly crushing all foreign trade which the two great 
European contestants had left. It kindled all the fires 
of hostility between the Federalists and Republicans 
— who had now fairly accepted the name of Democrats, 
a name borrowed from France, and fairly forced on 
them by their opponents. The act brought ruin to 
so many households that it might well be at least 
doubted whether it brought good to any. The very 
children of New England rose up against it, in the 
person of Bryant, who, when a boy of thirteen, wrote 
in opposition to it his first elaborate lay. It was be- 
lieved by the Federalists to be aimed expressly at the 
eastern States, yet John Quincy Adams, Senator from 
Massachusetts, supported it, and then resigned, his 
course being disapproved by his legislature. He 
it was, however, who informed the President at last 
that the embargo could be endured no longer, and 
got it modified, in 1809, so as to apply only to Eng- 
land and France. Jefferson consented reluctantly 
even to this degree of pressure, but he wrote, looking 
back upon the affair in 1816, "I felt the foundations 
of the government shaken under my feet by the New 
England township"; and he always urged thencefor- 
ward that the town system organized the voice of the 
people in a way with which no unwieldy county or- 
ganization, such as prevailed at the South, could 
compete. Yet all but the commercial States sus- 
tained the embargo, and the Federalist party was 
left a broken and hopeless minority. Jefferson re- 
mained strong in popularity. His second term had 
secured a triumphant end to the long contest with 

340 



THE EARLY AMERICAN PRESIDENTS 

Tripoli, whose insolent claims were checked by the 
successes of Decatur and by a treaty (1805). An 
act had also been passed forever prohibiting the 
African slave-trade after January i, 1808. Jeffer- 
son was urged to become for a third time a candidate 
for the Presidency, but wisely declined in favor of 
his friend Madison. In the election of 1808, James 
Madison, of Virginia, had 122 votes, C. C. Pinckney 
47, and George Clinton 6, Mr. Madison being there- 
fore elected ; while on the vote for "Vice-president 
George Clinton had a smaller majority. The third 
Chief Magistrate of the United States thus retired to 
private life after a career which has influenced Ameri- 
can institutions to this day more profoundly than 
that of any other President unless it be Jackson. 

Jefferson was a man full of thoughts and of studi- 
ous purposes ; trustful of the people, distrustful of the 
few; a generous friend, but a vehement and unscru- 
pulous foe ; not so much deliberately false as without 
a clear sense of truth; courageous for peace, but 
shrinking and vacillating in view of war; ignorant of 
his own limitations ; as self-confident in financial and 
commercial matters, of which he knew little, as in 
respect to the principles of republican government, 
about which he showed more foresight than any man 
of his time. He may have underrated the dangers 
to which the nation might be exposed from igno- 
rance and vice, but he never yielded, on the other 
hand, to the cowardice of culture; he never relaxed 
his faith in the permanence of popular government 
or in the high destiny of man. 

Meanwhile John Adams, on his farm in Quincy, 
had been superintending his haymakers with some- 
thing as near to peace of mind as a deposed President 

341 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

can be expected to attain. He was not a person of 
eminent humility, nor is it usually agreeable to a pub- 
lic man when his correspondents cease to be count- 
ed by the thousand and his letters shrink to two a 
week. His high-minded wife, more cordially accept- 
ing the situation, wrote with sincere satisfaction of 
skimming milk in her dairy at five o'clock in the 
morning. Each had perhaps something to say, when 
Jefferson was mentioned, about "Csesar with a Sen- 
ate at his heels," but it did not prevent the old friend- 
ship with Ccesar from reviving in later life. Jeffer- 
son had written to Washington long before, that even 
Adams's "apostasy to hereditary monarchy and 
nobility" had not alienated them; Adams saw in 
Jefferson, as time went on, the friend and even po- 
litical adviser of his own son. Old antagonisms faded ; 
old associations grew stronger ; and the two aged men 
floated on, like two ships becalmed at nightfall that 
drift together into port and cast anchor side by side. 



XV 
THE SECOND WAR FOR INDEPENDENCE 

JEFFERSON'S period of office lasted technically 
for eight years, but it is not wholly incorrect to 
estimate, as Parton suggests, that it endured for near- 
ly a quarter of a century. Madison's and Monroe's 
administrations were but the continuation of it. The 
fourth and fifth Presidents had, indeed, so much in 
common that it was about an even chance which 
should take the Presidency first. Both had long 
been friends of Jefferson; both had something to do 
with reconciling him to the Federal States Constitu- 
tion, which he had at first opposed. He himself would 
have rather preferred Monroe for his immediate suc- 
cessor, but the legislature of Virginia pronounced in 
favor of Madison, who, like the two others, was a 
native of that then powerful State. It really made 
little difference which preceded. Josiah Quincy, in 
a famous speech, designated them simply as James 
the First and James the Second. The two were 
alike Jeffersonian ; their administrations moved pro- 
fessedly in the line indicated by their predecessor, 
and the success of his policy must be tested in a 
degree by that of theirs. Both inherited something 
of his unpopularity with the Federalists, but Madi- 
son partially lived it down, and Monroe saw nearly 
the extinction of it. The Jeffersonian policy may, 

343 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

therefore, fairly be judged, not alone by its early 
storms, but by the calm which at last followed. 

James Madison had been Secretary of State for 
eight years under Jefferson, and had not only borne 
his share earlier than this in public affairs, but had 
furnished a plan which formed the basis of the Con- 
stitution, and had afterwards aided Hamilton and 
Jay in writing The Federalist in support of it. For 
these reasons, and because he was the last survivor 
of those who signed the great act of national organ- 
ization, he was called, before his death, "The Father 
of the Constitution." He was a man of clear head, 
modest manners, and peaceful disposition. His 
bitter political opponents admitted that he was 
honorable, well informed, and even, in his own way, 
patriotic ; not mean or malignant. As to his appear- 
ance, he is described by one of these opponents, 
William Sullivan, as one who had "a calm expres- 
sion, a penetrating blue eye, and who looked like a 
thinking man." In figure, he was small and rather 
stout; he was partially bald, wore powder in his hair, 
and dressed in black, without any of Jefferson's slov- 
enliness. In speech he was slow and grave. Mrs. 
Madison was a pleasing woman, twenty years younger 
than himself, and they had no children. 

Their arrival brought an immediate change in the 
manners of the President's house; they were both 
fond of society and ceremony, and though the new 
President claimed to be the most faithful of Jeffer- 
sonians, he found no difficulty in restoring the formal 
receptions which his predecessor had disused. These 
levees were held in what a British observer of that 
day called the " President's palace," a building which 
the same observer (Gleig) afterwards described as 

344 



SECOND WAR FOR INDEPENDENCE 

"small, incommodious, and plain," although its walls 
were the same with those of the present White House, 
only the interior having been burned by the British 
in the war soon to be described. vSuch as it was, it 
was thrown open at these levees, which every one 
was free to attend, while music played, and the cos- 
tumes of foreign ambassadors gave, as now, some 
gayety to the scene. Mrs. Madison, according to a 
keen observer, Mrs. Quincy, wore on these occasions 
her carriage dress, the same in which she appeared 
on Sunday at the Capitol, where religious services 
were then held — "a purple velvet pelisse, and a hat 
trimmed with ermine. A very elegant costume," 
adds this feminine critic, "but not, I thought, ap- 
propriate to a lady receiving company at home." 
At another time Mr. and Mrs. Quincy dined at the 
President's house, "in the midst of the enemy's 
camp," they being the only Federalists among some 
five-and-twenty Democrats. The house, ]\Irs. Quincy 
tells us, was richly but incongruously furnished, "not 
of a piece, as we ladies say." On this occasion Mrs. 
Madison wore black velvet, with a very rich head- 
dress of coquelicot and gold, having on a necklace of 
the same color. At another time Mrs. Quincy went 
by invitation with her children, and was shown 
through the front rooms. Meeting the lady of the 
house, she apologized for the liberty, and Mrs. Madi- 
son said, gracefully, " It is as much your house as it 
is mine, ladies." The answer has a certain historic 
value ; it shows that the spirit of Jefferson had already 
wrought a change in the direction of democratic feel- 
ing. Such a remark would hardly have been made 
by Mrs. Washington, or even by Mrs. Adams. 

The tone of society in Washington had undoubted- 
'3 345 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

ly something of the coarser style which then prevailed 
in all countries. Men drank more heavily, wrangled 
more loudly, and there was a good deal of what after- 
wards came to be known as "plantation manners." 
The mutual bearing of Congressmen was that of cour- 
tesy, tempered by drimkenness and duelling; and it 
was true then, as always, that every duel caused ten 
new quarrels for each one that it decided. When 
Josiah Quincy, then the leader of the Federalists in 
Congress, made his famous speech against the in- 
vasion of Canada (January 5, 181 3), and Henry Clay, 
then Speaker of the House, descended from the chair 
expressly to force him to the alternative of "a duel 
or disgrace" — as avowed by one of his friends to 
Quincy — it was not held to be anything but honor- 
able action, and only the high moral courage of 
Quincy enabled him to avoid the alternative. On a 
later occasion, Grundy, of Tennessee, having to answer 
another speech by Quincy, took pains to explain to 
him privately that though he must abuse him as a 
representative Federalist or else lose his election, he 
would endeavor to bestow the abuse like a gentle- 
man. " Except Tim Pickering," said this frank Ten- 
nesseean, " there is not a man in the United States so 
perfectly hated by the people of my district as your- 
self. By I must abuse you, or I shall never get 

re-elected. I will do it, however, genteelly. I will 

not do it as that fool Clay did it, strike so hard as 

to hurt myself. But abuse you I must." Seeing by 
this explanation what was the tone of Congressional 
manners when putting on gentility, we can form some 
conception of what they were on those more frequent 
occasions when they were altogether ungenteel. 
But the amenities of Mrs. Madison and the gentili- 

346 



SECOND WAR FOR INDEPENDENCE 

ties of Mr. Grundy were alike interrupted by the ex- 
citements of war — "the war of 1812," habitually 
called "the late war" until there was one still later. 
For this contest, suddenly as it came at last, there 
were years of preparation. Long had the United 
States suffered the bitter experience of being placed 
between two contending nations, neither of which 
could be made into a friend or easily reached as an 
enemy. Napoleon with his "Decrees," the British 
government with its "Orders in Council," had in 
turn preyed upon American commerce, and it was 
scarce reviving from the paralysis of Jefferson's em- 
bargo. At home, men were divided as to the remedy, 
and the old sympathies for France and for England 
reappeared on each side. Unfortimately for the 
Federalists, while they were wholly right in many of 
their criticisms on the manner in which the war came 
about, they put themselves in the wrong as to its main 
feature. We can now see that in their just wrath 
against Napoleon they would have let the nation re- 
main in a position of perpetual childhood and subor- 
dination before England. No doubt there were vari- 
ous points at issue in the impending contest, but the 
most important one, and the only one that remained in 
dispute all through the war, was that of the right of 
search and impressment — the English claiming the 
right to visit American vessels and impress into the 
naval service any sailors who appeared to be British 
subjects. The one great object of the war of 181 2 
was to get rid of this insolent and degrading practice. 
It must be understood that this was not a question 
of reclaiming deserters from the British navy, for 
the seamen in question had very rarely belonged to 
it. There existed in England at that time an out- 

347 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

rage on civilization, now abandoned, called impress- 
ment, by which any sailor, and many who were not 
sailors, could be seized and compelled to serve in the 
navy. The horrors of the "press-gang," as exhibit- 
ed in the sea-side towns of England, have formed the 
theme of many novels. It was bad enough at home, 
but when applied on board the vessels of a nation with 
which England was at peace, it became one of those 
outrages which only proceed from the strong to the 
weak, and are never reciprocated. Lord Colling- 
wood said well, in one of his letters, that England 
would not submit to such an aggression for an hour. 
Merely to yield to visitation for such a purpose was 
a confession of national weakness ; but the actual case 
was far worse than this. Owing to the similarity of 
language, it was always difficult to distinguish be- 
tween English and American seamen; and the temp- 
tation was irresistible to the visiting officer, anxious 
for the enlargement of his own crew, to give England 
the benefit of the doubt. The result was that an 
English lieutenant, or even midshipman, once on 
board an American ship, was, in the words of the 
English writer Cobbett, " at once accuser, witness, 
judge, and captor," and we have also Cobbett 's state- 
ment of the consequences. " Great numbers of 
Americans have been impressed," he adds, "and are 
now in our navy. . . . That many of these men have 
died on board our ships, that many have been worn 
out in the service, there is no doubt. Some obtain 
their release through the application of the American 
Consul, and the sufferings of these have been in many 
instances very great. There have been instances 
where men have thus got free after having been 
flogged through the fleet for desertion." Between 

348 



SECOND WAR FOR INDEPENDENCE 

1797 and i8or more than two thousand applications 
for impressed seamen were made through the Ameri- 
can Minister; and of these only one-twentieth were 
proved to be British subjects, though nearly one-half 
were retained for further proof. When the Hornet 
captured the British sloop Peacock, the victors found 
on board three American seamen who had been forced, 
by holding pistols at their heads, to fight against 
their own countrymen. Four American seamen on 
the British ship Aetata were ordered five dozen lashes, 
then four dozen, then two dozen, then kept in irons 
three months, for refusing to obey orders under sim- 
ilar circumstances. There was nothing new about 
the grievance; it had been the subject of indignant 
negotiation since 1789. In 1796 Timothy Pickering, 
Secretary of State, a representative Federalist, had 
denounced the practice of search and impressment as 
the sacrifice of the rights of an independent nation, 
and lamented "the long and fruitless attempts" to 
correct it. In 1806 the merchants of Boston had 
called upon the general government to " assert our 
rights and support the dignity of the United States"; 
and the merchants of Salem had offered to "pledge 
their lives and properties" in support of necessary 
measures of redemption. Yet it shows the height of 
party feeling that when, in 181 2, Mr. Madison's gov- 
ernment finally went to w^ar for these very rights, the 
measure met with the bitterest opposition from the 
whole Federalist party, and from the commercial 
States generally. 

A good type of the Federalist opposition on this 
particular point is to be found in the pamphlets of 
John Lowell. This writer was the son of the eminent 
Massachusetts judge of that name ; he was a well-edu- 

349 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

cated lawyer, was president of the Massachusetts Agri- 
cultural Society, and wrote under the name of "A 
New England Farmer." In spite of the protests 
offered half a dozen years before by his own neigh- 
bors, he declared the whole outcry against impress- 
ment to be a device of Madison's party. The nation, 
he said, was "totally opposed to a war for the pur- 
pose of protecting British seamen against their own 
sovereign." The whole matter at issue, he asserted, 
was " the protection of renegadoes and deserters from 
the British navy." He argued unflinchingly for the 
English right of search, called it a "consecrated" 
right, maintained that the allegiance of British sub- 
jects was perpetual, and that no residence in a for- 
eign country could absolve them. He held that every 
sailor born in Great Britain, whether naturalized in 
America or not, should be absolutely excluded from 
American ships; and that, until this was done, the 
right to search American vessels and take such sail- 
ors out was the only restraint on the abuse. He 
was a man of great ability and public spirit, and yet 
he held views which now seem to have renounced all 
national self-respect. While such a man, with a large 
party behind him, took this position, it must simply 
be said that the American republic had not yet as- 
serted itself to be a nation. Soon after the Revolu- 
tion, when some one spoke of that contest to Franklin 
as the war for independence, he said, " Say rather the 
war of the Revolution; the war for independence is 
yet to be fought." The war of 1812 was just the 
contest he described. 

To this excitement directed against the war, the 
pulpit very largely contributed, the chief lever ap- 
plied by the Federalist clergy being foimd in the 

350 



SECOND WAR FOR INDEPENDENCE 

atrocities of Napoleon. ''The chieftain of Europe, 
drunk with blood, casts a look upon us ; he raises his 
voice, more terrible than the midnight yell of sav- 
ages at the doors of our forefathers." These melo- 
dramatic words are from a sermon, once famous, 
delivered by Rev. Daniel Parish, of Byfield, Massa- 
chusetts, on Fast Day, 1810. Elsewhere he says: 
"Would you establish those in the first offices of the 
land who will poison the hearts of your children with 
infidelity, who will harness them in the team of Hol- 
landers and Germans and Swiss and Italians to draw 
the triumphal car of Napoleon ? Are you nursing your 
sons to be dragged into his armies?" The climax 
was reached when one pulpit orator wound up his 
appeal by asking his audience if they were ready to 
wear wooden shoes, in allusion to the sabots of the 
French peasants. 

A curious aspect of the whole affair was the firm 
conviction of the Federalists that they themselves 
were utterly free from all partisan feeling, and that 
what they called the " Baleful Demon, Party," exist- 
ed only on the other side. For the Democrats to 
form Jacobin societies was an outrage ; but the " Wash- 
ington Benevolent Societies" of the Federalists were 
claimed to be utterly non - political, though they 
marched with banners, held quarterly meetings, and 
were all expected to vote one way. At one of their 
gatherings there was a company of "School -boy 
Federalists" to the number of two hundred and 
fifty, uniformed in blue and white, and wearing 
Washington's Farewell Address in red morocco 
around their necks. It was a sight hardly to be 
paralleled in the most excited election of these days; 
yet the Federalists stoutly maintained that there 

351 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

was nothing partisan about it; the other side was 
partisan. They admired themselves for their width 
of view and their freedom from prejudice, and yet 
they sincerely believed that the mild and cautious 
Madison, who would not have declared war with 
England unless forced into it by others, was plotting 
to enslave his own nation for the benefit of France. 
The very names of their pamphlets show this. One 
of John Lowell's bears on the title-page ''Perpetual 
War the policy of Mr. Madison . . . the important and 
interesting subject of a conscript militia, and an im- 
mense standing army of guards and spies under the 
name of a local volunteer corps.'' The Federalist lead- 
ers took distinctly the ground that they should refuse 
to obey a conscription law to raise troops for the 
conquest of Canada; and when that very question- 
able measure failed by one vote in the Senate, the 
nation may have escaped a serious outbreak. Had 
the law passed and been enforced, William Sullivan 
ominousty declares, " No doubt the citizens would 
have armed, and might have marched, but not, it is 
believed, to Canada." This was possibly overstated; 
but the crisis thus arising might have been a formid- 
able matter. 

It might, indeed, have been far more dangerous 
than the Hartford Convention of 1814, which was, 
after all, only a peaceable meeting of some two dozen 
honest men, with George Cabot at their head — men 
of whom very few had even a covert purpose of dis- 
solving the Union, but who were driven to something 
very near desperation by the prostration of their 
commerce and the defencelessness of their coast. 
They found themselves between the terror of a con- 
scription in New England and the outrage of an in- 

352 



SECOND WAR FOR INDEPENDENCE 

vasion of Canada. They found the President call- 
ing in his message of November 4, 181 2, for new 
and mysterious enactments against " corrupt and per- 
fidious intercourse with the enemy, not amounting 
to treason," and they did not feel quite sure that 
this might not end in the guillotine or the lamp-post. 
They saw what were called "the horrors of Balti- 
more" in a mob where the blood of Revolutionary 
officers had been shed in that city under pretence of 
suppressing a newspaper. No one could tell whither 
these things were leading, and they could at least 
protest. The protest will always be remarkable from 
the skill with which it turned against Jefferson and 
Madison the dangerous State-rights doctrines of their 
own injurious Virginia and Kentucky resolutions. 
The Federalist and Democratic parties had complete- 
ly shifted ground ; and we can now see that the Hart- 
ford Convention really strengthened the traditions 
of the Union by showing that the implied threat of 
secession was a game at which two could play. 

It must be remembered, too, in estimating the 
provocation which led to this famous convention, 
that during all this time the commercial States were 
most unreasonably treated. In the opinion of Judge 
Story, himself a moderate Republican and a member 
of Congress, " New England was expected, so far as 
the Republicans were concerned, to do everything 
and have nothing. They were to obey, but not to 
be trusted." Their commerce, which had furnished 
so largely the supplies for the nation, was viewed by 
a great many not merely with indifference, but with 
real dislike. Jefferson, whose views had more in- 
fluence than those of any ten other men, still held to 
his narrow Virginia-planter opinion that a national 

353 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

business must somehow be an evil; and it was hard 
for those whose commerce his embargo had ruined to 
be patient while he rubbed his hands and assured 
them that they would be much better off without 
any ships. When the war of 1812 was declared, the 
merchants of Boston and Salem had — as it was es- 
timated by Isaac P. Davis, quoted in the memoirs 
of Mrs. Quincy — twenty million dollars' worth of 
property on the sea and in British ports. The war 
sacrificed nearly all of it, and the losers were expected 
to be grateful. In a letter to the legislature of 
New Hampshire, four years before (August, 1808), 
Jefferson had calmly recommended to the people of 
that region to retire from the seas and "to provide 
for themselves [ourselves] those comforts and con- 
veniences of life for which it would be unwise ever to 
recur to other countries." Moreover, it was argued, 
the commercial States were almost exclusively the 
sufferers by the British intrusions upon American 
vessels; and if they did not think it a case for war, 
why should it be taken up by the States which were 
not hurt by it? Again, the commercial States had 
yielded to the general government the right of re- 
ceiving customs duties and of national defence, on 
the express ground of receiving protection in return. 
Madison had pledged himself — as he was reminded 
in the once famous "Rockingham County [New 
Hampshire] address," penned by young Daniel Web- 
ster — to give the nation a navy; and it had resulted 
in Jefferson's hundred and fifty little gun -boats and 
some twenty larger vessels. As for the army, it con- 
sisted at this time of about three thousand men all 
told. The ablest men in the President's cabinet — 
Gallatin and Pinkney — were originally opposed to 

354 



SECOND WAR FOR INDEPENDENCE 

the war. The only member of that body who had 
any personal knowledge of military matters was Col- 
onel James Monroe, Secretary of State; and it was 
subsequently thought that he knew just enough to 
be in the way. Nevertheless, the war was declared, 
June i8, 1812 — declared reluctantly, hesitatingly, 
but at last courageously. Five days after the dec- 
laration the British "Orders in Council," which had 
partly caused it, were revoked; but hostilities went 
on. In the same autumn Madison was re-elected 
President, receiving 128 electoral votes against 89 
for De Witt Clinton ; Elbridge Gerry, of Massachusetts, 
being chosen Vice - president. A sufficient popular 
verdict was thus given, and the war was continued. 
In its early period much went wrong. British and 
Indians ravaged the northwestern frontier; General 
Hull invaded Canada in vain, and finally surrendered 
Detroit (August 15, 181 2). He was condemned by 
court-martial and sentenced to be shot, but was par- 
doned because of his Revolutionary services; and 
much has since been written in his vindication, mak- 
ing it altogether probable that he was simply made 
the scapegoat of an inefficient administration. To 
the surprise of every one, it was upon the sea, not the 
land, that the United States proved eminently suc- 
cessful, and the victory of the Constitution over the 
Guerriere was the first of a long line of triumphs. 
The number of British war-vessels captured during 
the three years of the war was 56, with 880 cannon; 
the number of American war-vessels only 25, with 
350 guns; and there were, besides these, thousands 
of merchant-vessels taken on both sides by privateers. 
But these mere statistics tell nothing of the excite- 
ment of those picturesque victories which so long 

355 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

thrilled the heart of every American school-boy with 
the conviction that this nation was the peer of the 
proudest upon the seas. Yet the worst predictions 
of the Federalists did not exaggerate the injury done 
by the war to American commerce; and the highest 
expectations of the other party did no more than 
justice to the national prestige gained by the suc- 
cesses of the American navy. It is fairly to be re- 
membered to the credit of the Federalists, however, 
that but for their urgent appeals there would have 
been no navy, and that it was created only by set- 
ting aside Jefferson's pet theories of sea defence. 
The Federalists could justly urge, also, that the mer- 
chant-service was the only nursery of seamen, and 
that with its destruction the race of American sailors 
would die out — a prediction which the present day 
has seen almost fulfilled. 

But, for the time being, the glory of the American 
navy was secure; and even the sea-fights hardly 
equalled the fame of Perry's victory on Lake Erie, 
immortalized by two phrases, Lawrence's "Don't 
give up the ship," which Perry bore upon his flag, 
and Perry's own brief despatch, "We have met the 
enemy, and they are ours." Side by side with this 
came Harrison's land victories over the Indians and 
English in the northwest. Tecumseh, who held the 
rank of brigadier-general in the British army, had, 
with the aid of his brother, "the Prophet," united 
all the Indian tribes in a league. His power was 
broken by Harrison in the battle of Tippecanoe (No- 
vember 7, 1811), and finally destroyed in that of the 
Thames, in Canada (October 5, 181 3), where Tecum- 
seh fell. 

But the war, from the first, yielded few glories to 

356 



SECOND WAR FOR INDEPENDENCE 

either side by land. The Americans were still a 
nation of woodsmen and sharp-shooters, but they had 
lost the i^ilitary habit, and they had against them 
the veterans of Wellington, and men who boasted — 
to ly^rs. Peter, of Washington — that they had not 
slept under a roof for seven years. Even with such 
men the raid on the city of Washington by General 
Ross was a bold thing— to march with four thousand 
men sixty miles into an enemy's country, burn its 
Capitol, and retreat. Had the Americans renewed 
the tactics of Concord and Lexington, and fought 
from behind trees and under cover of brick walls, 
the British commander's losses might have been 
frightful; but to risk a pitched battle was to leave 
themselves helpless if defeated. The utter rout of 
the Americans at Bladensburg left Washington to 
fall defenceless into the hands of the enemy. The 
accounts are still somewhat confused, but the British 
statement is that, before entering the city. General 
Ross sent in a flag of truce, meaning to levy a con- 
tribution, as from a conquered town ; and the flag of 
truce being fired upon, the destruction of the town 
followed. Washington had then less than a thousand 
houses; the British troops set fire to the unfinished 
Capitol with the Library of Congress, to the Treasury 
Buildings, the Arsenal, and a few private dwellings. 
At the President's house — according to their own 
story, since doubted — they found dinner ready, de- 
voured it, and then set the house on fire. Mr. Madi- 
son sent a messenger to his wife to bid her flee. She 
wrote to her sister, ere going, ' ' Our kind friend Mr. 
Carroll has come to hasten my departure, and is in 
a very bad humor with me because I insist on wait- 
ing till the large picture of General Washington is 

357 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

secured, and it requires to be unscrewed from the 
wall." She finally secured it, put it into the hands 
of two gentlemen passing by, Jacob Barker and Mr. 
De Peyster, and went off in her carriage with her sis- 
ter, Mrs. Cutts. The Federalist papers made plenty 
of fun of her retreat, and the historian Lossing has 
preserved a fragment of one of their ballads in which 
she is made to say to the President, in the style of 
John Gilpin: 

"Sister Cutts and Cutts and I, 
And Cutts's children three, 
Shall in the coach, and you shall ride 
On horseback after we." 

But, on the whole, the lady of the Presidential "pal- 
ace" carried off more laurels from Washington than 
most American men. 

The news of the burning of Washington was va- 
riously received in England: the British Annual Reg- 
ister called it "a return to the times of barbarism," 
and the London Times saw in it, on the contrary, the 
disappearance of the American republic, which it 
called by the withering name of an "association": 
"That ill-organized association is on the eve of dis- 
solution, and the world is speedily to be delivered of 
the mischievous example of the existence of a gov- 
ernment founded on democratic rebellion." But the 
burning had, on the contrary, just the opposite effect 
from this. After Washington had fallen, Baltimore 
seemed an easy prey ; but there was a great rising of 
the people; the British army was beaten off — the 
affair turning largely on the gallant defence of Fort 
McHenry by Colonel George Armistead — and Gen- 
eral Ross was killed. It was at this time that Key's 

358 



SECOND WAR FOR INDEPENDENCE 

lyric "The Star-spangled Banner" was written, the 
author being detained on board the cartel-ship Min- 
den during the bombardment. Before this there had 
been various depredations and skirmishes along the 
coast of Maine and a courageous repulse of the Brit- 
ish at Stonington, Connecticut. Afterwards came 
the well-fought battle of Lundy's Lane and the clos- 
ing victory of New Orleans, fought after the treaty 
of peace had been actually signed, and unexpectedly 
leaving the final laurels of the war in the hands of the 
Americans. 

After this battle an English officer visiting the field 
saw within a few hundred yards ' ' nearly a thousand 
bodies, all arrayed in British uniforms," and heard 
from the American officer in command the statement 
that the American loss had consisted only of eight 
men killed and fourteen wounded. The loss of the 
English was nearly twenty-one hundred in killed and 
wounded, including two general officers. .V triumph 
so overwhelming restored some feeling of military 
self-respect, sorely needed after the disaster at Wash- 
ington. "There were," says the Federalist William 
Sullivan, "splendid processions, bonfires, and illumi- 
nations, as though the independence of the country 
had been a second time achieved." Such, indeed, 
was the feeling, and with some reason. Franklin's 
war for independence was at an end. The battle 
took place January 8, 1815, but the treaty of peace 
had been signed at Ghent on the day before Christ- 
mas. The terms agreed upon said not one word 
about impressment or the right of search, but the 
question had been practically settled by the naval 
successes of the United States; and so great were 
the rejoicings on the return of peace that even 

359 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

this singular omission seemed of secondary impor- 
tance. 

The verdict of posterity upon the war of 1812 may 
be said to be this: that there was ample ground for it, 
and that it completed the work of the Revolution; 
and yet that it was the immediate product of a few 
ambitious men, whose aims and principles were not 
really so high as were those of many who opposed the 
war. The outrageous impressment of American sea- 
men touched a point of national pride, and justly; 
while the United States submitted to this it certainly 
could not be called an independent nation; and the 
abuse was in fact ended by the war, even though the 
treaty of peace was silent. On the other side, the 
dread entertained of Napoleon by the Federalists 
was perfectly legitimate; and this, too, time has jus- 
tified. But this peril was really far less pressing than 
the other: the United States needed more to be lib- 
erated from the domineering attitude of England 
than from the remoter tyranny of Napoleon, and it 
was therefore necessary to reckon with England first. 
In point of fact, the Federalists did their duty in 
action; the commonwealth of Massachusetts fur- 
nished during those three years more soldiers than 
any other; and the New England States, which op- 
posed the war, sent more men into the field than the 
Southern States, which brought on the contest. Un- 
fortunately the world remembers words better than 
actions — litiera scripta manet— and the few question- 
able phrases of the Hartford Convention are now 
more familiar in memory than the fourteen thousand 
men whom Massachusetts raised' in 18 14 or the two 
millions of dollars she paid for bounties. 

The rest of Madison's administration was a career 

360 




V4. * 



„ , '^ :-?f '^ 



^ 




Vr 







i.N TIIIC AMKRKAX lRLXi_llLb, iJAllLb UF NEW ORLEAN'S 



SECOND WAR FOR INDEPENDENCE 

of peace. Louisiana had long since (Apj;il 30, 181 2) 
become a State of the Union, and Indiana was also 
admitted (December 11, 1816). An act was passed 
under the leadership of Lowndes, of South Carolina, 
providing for the payment, in instalments of ten 
millions of dollars annually, of the national debt of 
one hundred and twenty millions. Taxes were re- 
duced, the tariff was slightly increased, and in April, 
1816, a second national bank was chartered for a term 
of twenty years. Here, as in some other matters, at 
least one of the parties proved to have changed ground, 
and the Democratic Republican newspapers began 
eagerly to reprint Hamilton's arguments for a bank 
— arguments which they had formerly denounced 
and derided. To the Federalists the passage of the 
bank act was a complete triumph, and, while their 
own party disappeared, they could feel that some of 
its principles survived. A national bank was their 
policy, not that of Jefferson ; and Jefferson and Madi- 
son had, moreover, lived to take up those theories 
of a strong national government which they had 
formerly called monarchical and despotic. The Fed- 
eralists had, indeed, come equally near to embracing 
the extreme State -rights doctrines which their op- 
ponents had laid down ; but the laws of physical per- 
spective seem to be reversed in moral perspective, 
so that our own change of position seems to us insig- 
nificant, while an equal change on the other side looks 
conspicuous and important. Be this as it may, Madi- 
son's administration closed in peace, partly the peace 
of good-nature, partly of fatigue. The usual nomi- 
nations were made for the Presidency by the Con- 
gressional caucuses, but when it came to the voting 
it was almost all one way. The only States choos- 
>4 361 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

ing Federalist electors were Massachusetts, Connect- 
icut, and Delaware. James Monroe — Josiah Quincy's 
"James the Second" — had 183 electoral votes, 
against 34 for Rufus King, so that four years more 
of yet milder Jeffersonianism were secured. The 
era of bitterness had passed and the "era of good 
feeling" was at hand. 



M^ 



XVI 
THE ERA OF GOOD FEELING 

[ANY Presidents of the United States have served 
their country by remaining at Washington, but 
probably James Monroe was the only one who ever 
accomplished great good by going on an excursion. 
Few battles in the Revolution were of so much bene- 
fit to the nation as the journey which, in 1817, the 
President decided to undertake. There were two 
especial reasons for this beneficent result: the tour 
reconciled the people to the administration, and it 
reconciled the administration to what seemed the 
really alarming growth of the people. 

The fact that Monroe was not generally held to be 
a very great man enhanced the value of this expe- 
dition. He had been an unfortunate diplomatist, 
retrieving his failures by good-luck; as a soldier, he 
had blundered at Washington, and yet had retained 
enough of confidence to be talked of as probable com- 
mander of a Canadian invasion. All this was rather 
advantageous. It is sometimes a good thing when a 
ruler is not personally eminent enough to obscure his 
office. In such a case, what the man loses the office 
may gain. Wherever Washington went he was re- 
ceived as a father among grateful children; Adams 
had his admirers, Jefferson his adorers; Madison had 
carried through a war which, if not successful, was 

Z^2> 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

at least a drawn game. All these, had they under- 
taken what play-actors call "starring in the prov- 
inces," would have been received as stars, not as 
officials. Whatever applauses they received would 
have been given to the individual, not the President. 
But when Monroe travelled, it was simply the Chief 
Magistrate of the nation who met the eyes of men. 
He was not a star, but a member of the company, a 
stock actor, one of themselves. In the speeches with 
which he was everywhere received there was very 
little said about his personality; it was the head of 
the nation who was welcomed. Thus stripped of all 
individual prestige, the occasion appealed to every 
citizen. For the first time the people of the United 
States met their President as such, and felt that they 
were a nation. 

It was at the end of sixteen years of strife — politi- 
cal strife more bitter than can easily be paralleled in 
these calmer days. The result of this contest may 
in some respects have been doubtful, but on one point 
at least it was clear. It had extinguished the colonial 
theory of government and substituted the national. 
Hamilton and the Federalists, with all their high 
qualities, had still disbelieved in all that lay beyond 
the domain of experience. But experience, as Cole- 
ridge said, is like the stern-lights of a ship, illumining 
only the track already passed over. Jefferson, with 
all his faults, had steered for the open sea. Madison's 
war had impoverished the nation, but had saved its 
self-respect. Henceforward the American flag was 
that of an independent people — a people ready to 
submit to nothing, even from England, which Eng- 
land would not tolerate in return. And it so hap- 
pened that all the immediate honor of this increased 

364 



THE ERA OF GOOD FEELING 

self-respect belonged, or seemed to belong, to the 
party in power. Jefferson was the most pacific of 
men, except Madison ; both dreaded a standing army, 
and shrank with reluctance from a navy; yet the 
laurels of both arms of the service, such as they were, 
went to Madison and Jefferson. The Federalists, 
who had begged for a navy and had threatened to 
raise an army on their own account, now got no 
credit for either. That party held, on the whole, 
the best educated, the most high-minded, the most 
solvent part of the nation ; yet it had been wrecked 
by its own want of faith. When in the Electoral 
College Monroe had 183 votes, against 34 for Rufus 
King, it was plain that the contest was at an end, 
and that the nation was ready to be soothed. Mon- 
roe was precisely the sedative to be applied, and his 
journey was the process of application. 

So much for the people; but there were also anx- 
ieties to be quieted among the nation's statesmen. 
Not only did the people need to learn confidence in 
their leaders, but the leaders in the people. It was 
not that republican government itself was on trial, 
but that its scale seemed so formidable. Nobody 
doubted that it was a thing applicable among a few 
mountain communities, like those of Switzerland. 
What even the Democratic statesmen of that day 
doubted — and they had plenty of reason for the fear 
— was the possibility of applying self-government to 
the length and breadth of a continent peopled by 
many millions of men. They were not dismayed by 
the principle, but by its application ; not by the phi- 
losophy, but the geography. Washington himself, 
we know, was opposed to undertaking the ownership 
of the Mississippi River; and Monroe, when a mem- 

365 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

ber of the Virginia Convention, had argued against 
the adoption of the Federal Constitution, for geo- 
graphical reasons. "Consider," he said, "the terri- 
tory lying between the Atlantic Ocean and the Mis- 
sissippi. Its extent far exceeds that of the German 
Empire. It is larger than any territory that ever 
was under any one free government. It is too ex- 
tensive to be governed but by a despotic monarchy." 
This was the view of James Monroe in 1788, at a time 
when he could have little dreamed of ever becoming 
President. He was heard with respect, for he had 
been one of the Virginia committee-men who had 
transferred the northwestern lands to the United 
States government, and he was one of the few who 
had personally visited them. Yet he had these fears, 
and the worst of the alarm was that it had some 
foundation. But for the unexpected alliances of rail- 
way and telegraph, does anybody believe that Mame, 
Louisiana, and California would to-day form part of 
the same nation? In the mean time, while waiting 
for those mighty coadjutors, the journey of Monroe 
relieved anxiety in a very different manner, by re- 
vealing the immense strength to which the national 
feeling had already grown. At any rate, after this 
experience he expressed no more solicitude. In his 
message on internal improvements, written five years 
after his journey, he described the American system 
of government as one "capable of expansion over a 
vast territory." 

Monroe himself was now fifty-nine years old, and 
formed in physical appearance a marked contrast to 
the small size and neat, compact figure of his prede- 
cessor. He was six feet high, broad-shouldered, and 
rather raw-boned, with grayish-blue eyes, whose 

366 



THE ERA OF GOOD FEELING 

frank and pleasing expression is often mentioned by 
the writers of the period, and sometimes cited in il- 
lustration of Jefferson's remark that Monroe was "a 
man whose soul might be turned inside out without 
discovering a blemish to the world." He was dig- 
nified and courteous, but also modest, and even shy, 
so that his prevailing air was that of commonplace 
strength and respectable mediocrity. After all the 
political excitements of the past dozen years, noth- 
ing could be more satisfactory than this. People saw 
in him a plain Virginia farmer addressing audiences 
still mainly agricultural. Ralph Waldo Emerson 
once said to me, when looking for the first time on 
John P. Hale, of New Hampshire, then at the height 
of a rather brief eminence: "What an average man 
he is! He looks just like five hundred other men. 
That must be the secret of his power." It was pre- 
cisely thus with Monroe. He had in his cabinet men 
of talents far beyond his own — Adams, Calhoun, 
Crawford, Wirt ; Jefferson and Madison yet lived, his 
friends and counsellors; Jackson, Clay, Webster, and 
Benton were just coming forward into public life ; but 
none of all these gifted men could have reassured 
the nation by their mere aspect, in travelling through 
it, as he did. Each of these men, if President, would 
have been something more than the typical official. 
Monroe precisely filled the chair, and stood for the 
office, not for himself. 

He left Washington June 2, 181 7, accompanied 
only by his private secretary. Mason, and by Gen- 
eral Joseph G. Swift, the Chief Engineer of the War 
Department. The ostensible object of his jour- 
ney was to inspect the national defences. This ex- 
plained his choice of a companion, and gave him at 

367 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

each point an aim beyond the reception of courtesies. 
With this nominal errand he travelled through Mary- 
land to New York City, traversed Connecticut and 
Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and 
Maine, then a district only. He went southward 
through Vermont, visited the fortifications at Platts- 
burg, travelled through the forests to the St. Law- 
rence, inspected Sackett's Harbor and Fort Niagara ; 
went to Buffalo, and sailed through Lake Erie to 
Detroit. Thence he turned eastward again, return- 
ing through Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Maryland. He 
reached home September 17th, after an absence of 
more than three months. 

During all this trip there occurred not one circum- 
stance to mar the reception of the President, though 
there were plenty of hardships to test his endurance. 
Everywhere he was greeted with triumphal arches, 
groups of school-children, cavalcades of mounted 
citizens, and the roar of cannon. The Governor of 
Massachusetts, by order of the legislature, provided 
him with a military escort from border to border; 
no other State apparently did this, though the Gov- 
ernor of New Hampshire apologized for not having 
official authority to follow the example. Every- 
where there were addresses of welcome by eminent 
citizens. Everywhere the President made answer. 
Clad in the undress uniform of a Revolutionary officer 
— blue coat, light underclothes, and cocked hat — he 
stood before the people a portly and imposing figure, 
well representing the men who won American free- 
dom in arms. His replies, many of which are duly 
reported, seem now laudably commonplace and rea- 
sonably brief; but they were held at the time to be 
"elegant and impressive." 

368 



THE ERA OF 1) FEELING 

We see a lingering trace of the more ceremonial 
period of Washington and Adams when the semi- 
official historian of Monroe's travels reports that in 
approaching Dartmouth, New Hampshire, "although 
the road was shrouded in clouds of dust, he con- 
descended to leave his carriage and make his entry on 
horseback." The more eminent Federalist leaders, 
except H. G. Otis, took apparently no conspicuous 
part in the reception; but their place was supplied 
by others. Elder Goodrich, of the Enfield (New 
Hampshire) Shakers, addressed him with, "I, James 
Goodrich, welcome James Monroe to our habitations" ; 
and the young ladies of the Windsor (Vermont) Fe- 
male Academy closed their address by saying, "That 
success may crown all your exertions for the public 
good is the ardent wish of many a patriotic though 
youthful female bosom." Later, when traversing 
"the majestic forests" near Ogdensburg, New York, 
" his attention was suddenly attracted by an elegant 
collation, fitted up in a superior style by the officers 
of the army and the citizens of the country. He par- 
took of it with a heart beating in unison with those 
of his patriotic countrymen by whom he was sur- 
rounded, and acknowledged this unexpected and ro- 
mantic civility with an unaffected and dignified com- 
plaisance." 

Philadelphia had at this time a population of 
112,000 inhabitants; New York, 115,000; Baltimore, 
55,000; Boston, 40,000; Providence, 10,000; Hart- 
ford, 8000; Pittsburg, 7000; Cincinnati, 7000; St. 
Louis, 3500; Chicago was but a fort. The Ohio 
River was described by those who narrated this 
journey as an obscure and remote stream that had 
" for nearly six thousand years rolled in silent majesty 

369 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

through the towering forests of the New World." 
" It would not be," says a writer of that period, " the 
madness of a deranged imagination to conclude that 
this stream in process of time will become as much 
celebrated as the Ganges of Asia, the Nile of Africa, 
and the Danube of Europe. In giving this future 
importance to the Ohio, the Mississippi and the 
Missouri cannot be forgotten as exceeding it in length 
and in importance. These astonishing streams may 
hereafter, as civilization progresses in the present 
wilds of the American republic, become rivals to the 
Ohio." When we consider that the region thus 
vaguely indicated is now the centre of population for 
the nation, we learn what a little world it was, after 
all, which was embraced in the Presidential tour of 
James Monroe. Even of that small realm, however, 
he did not see the whole during these travels. We 
know from a letter of Crawford to Gallatin, quoted 
by Mr. Oilman, that a good deal of jealousy was felt 
in the southern States at Monroe's "apparent ac- 
quiescence in the seeming man-worship " at the North ; 
and Crawford thinks that while the President had 
gained in health by the trip, he had " lost as much as 
he had gained in popularity." The gain was, how- 
ever, made where he most needed it, and another tour 
to Augusta, Nashville, and Louisville soon restored 
the balance. 

The President being established at the seat of 
government, the fruits of his enlarged popularity 
were seen in the tranquillity and order of his admin- 
istration. The most fortunate of officials, he was 
aided by the general longing for peace. He was yet 
more strengthened by the fact that he was at the 
same time governing through a Democratic organiza- 

370 



THE ERA OF GOOD FEELING 

tion and on Federalist principles. Nominally he held 
the legitimate succession to Jefferson, having followed, 
like Madison, through the intermediate position, that 
of Secretary of State. But when it came to political 
opinions, we can now see that all which Federalism 
had urged — a strong government, a navy, a national 
bank, a protective tariff, internal improvements, a 
liberal construction of the Constitution — all these had 
become also Democratic doctrines. Were it not for 
their traditional reverence for Jefferson's name, it 
would sometimes have been hard to tell Madison and 
Monroe from Federalists. In a free country, when 
a party disappears, it is usually because the other 
side has absorbed its principles. So it was here, and 
we never can understand the extinction of Federal- 
ism unless we bear this fact in mind. In the excite- 
ment of contest the combatants had already changed 
weapons, and Federalism had been killed, like Laertes 
in "Hamlet," by its own sword. For the time, as 
Crawford wrote, all were Federalists, all Republi- 
cans. 

Henry Clay, who remains to us as a mere tradition 
of winning manners and ready eloquence, was almost 
unanimously elected and re-elected as Speaker of the 
House. But Clay was a Federalist without knowing 
it ; he wished to strengthen the army, to increase the 
navy, to make the tariff protective, to recognize and 
support the South American republics. General 
Jackson, too, the chief military hero of the period, 
developed the national impulse in a way that Jeffer- 
son would once have disapproved, by entering the 
territory of Spanish Florida (in 1818) to fight the 
Seminoles, and by putting to death as "outlaws and 
pirates" two British subjects, Arbuthnot and Am- 

371 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

brister, who aided the Indians. Then the purchase of 
Florida for five miUions was another bold step on the 
part of the central government, following a precedent 
which had seemed very questionable when Jefferson 
had annexed Louisiana. While buying this the na- 
tion yielded up all claim to what was afterwards 
Texas; and all these events built up more and more 
the national feeling — which was the bequest of P'ed- 
eralism — as distinct from the separate State feeling 
which was the original Democratic stock in trade. 

It is the crowning proof of the pacified condition 
to which parties were coming that this peace survived 
what would have been, under other circumstances, 
a signal of war — the first and sudden appearance of 
the vexed question of slavery. It came upon the 
nation, asjefferson said, "like a fire-bell in the night." 
It had slumbered since the adoption of the Constitu- 
tion, and came up as an incident of the great emigra- 
tion westward. For a time, in admitting new States, 
it was very easy to regard the Ohio River as a sort of 
dividing line, and to alternately admit a new Free 
State above it and a new Slave State below it. In 
this way had successively come in Louisiana (1812), 
Indiana (18 16), Mississippi (181 7), Illinois (18 18), 
Alabama (18 19). But when the process reached 
Maine and Missouri the struggle began. Should 
slavery extend beyond the Ohio border into the great 
Louisiana purchase? Again was every aspect of the 
momentous question debated with ardor, Rufus King 
leading one side, John Randolph the other, each side 
invoking the traditions of the fathers, and claiming 
to secure the safety of the nation. "At our even- 
ing parties," says John Ouincy Adams in his diary, 
"we hear of nothing but the Missouri question and 

372 



THE ERA OF GOOD FEELING 

Mr. King's speeches." The contest was ended by 
Mr. Clay's great effort of skill, known in history as the 
Missouri Compromise. The result was to admit both 
Maine (1820) and Missouri (182 1), with a provision 
thenceforward excluding slavery north of the line of 
36° 30', the southern boundary of Missouri. John 
Randolph called it "a dirty bargain," and christened 
those northern men who had formed it ' ' dough- 
faces" — a word which became thereafter a part of 
the political slang of the nation. 

Monroe, in a private letter written about this time 
(February 15, 1820), declared his belief that "the 
majority of States, of physical force, and eventually 
of votes in both Houses," would be ultimately "on 
the side of the non-slave-holding States." As a 
moderate Virginia slave-holder he recognized this as 
the probable condition of affairs. On the other hand, 
John Quincy Adams, strong in antislavery feeling, 
voted for the compromise, and afterwards expressed 
some misgivings about it. He held it to be all that 
could have been effected under the Constitution, and 
he shrank from risking the safety of the Union. " If 
the Union must be dissolved," he said, "the slavery 
question is precisely the question upon which it ought 
to break. For the present, however, this contest is laid 
to sleepy And it slept for many years. 

During two sessions of Congress the Missouri ques- 
tion troubled the newly found quiet of the nation, 
but it did not make so much as a ripple on the surface 
of the President's popularity. In 1820 the re-elec- 
tion of Monroe would have been absolutely unani- 
mous had not one dissatisfied elector given his vote 
for John Quincy Adams, the tradition being that this 
man did not wish any other President to rival Wash- 

373 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

ington in unanimity of choice. The Vice-president, 
Daniel D. Tompkins, was re-elected with less com- 
plete cordiality, there being fourteen votes against 
him in the Electoral College. Then followed the 
second administration of Monroe, to which was given, 
perhaps by the President himself, a name which has 
secured for the whole period a kind of peaceful emi- 
nence. It was probably fixed and made permanent 
by two lines in Halleck's once famous poem of 
"Alnwick Castle," evidently written during the poet's 
residence in England in 1822-23. Speaking of the 
change from the feudal to the commercial spirit, he 
says: 

"'Tis what 'our President,' Monroe, 

Has called 'the era of good feeling.* 
The Highlander, the bitterest foe 
To modern laws, has felt their blow, 
Consented to be taxed, and vote, 
And put on pantaloons and coat, 
And leave off cattle-stealing." 

It would seem from this verse that Monroe himself 
was credited with the authorship of the phrase; but 
I have been unable to find it in his published speeches 
or messages, and it is possible that it may be of news- 
paper origin, and that Halleck, writing in England, 
may have fathered it on the President himself. This 
is the more likely because even so mild a flavor of 
facetiousness as this was foreign to the character of 
Monroe. 

Under these soothing influences, at any rate, the 
nation, and especially its capital city, made some 
progress in the amenities and refinements of life. It 
was a period when the social etiquette of Washington 
City was going through some changes ; the population 

374 



THE ERA OF GOOD FEELING 

was growing larger, the classes were less distinct, the 
social duties of high officials more onerous. The 
diary of John Quincy Adams records cabinet meet- 
ings devoted to such momentous questions as who 
should make the first call, and who should be in- 
cluded in the official visiting - lists. Mrs. Monroe, 
without a cabinet council, made up her own mind to 
retrench some of those profuse civilities with which 
her predecessor had fatigued herself. Mrs. Madison, 
a large, portly, kindly dame, had retired from office 
equally regretted by the poor of Washington and by 
its high life; but she had gained this popularity at 
a severe cost. She had called on all conspicuous 
strangers; Mrs. Monroe intended to call on nobody. 
Mi;s. Madison had been always ready for visitors 
when at home ; het successor proposed not to receive 
them except at her regular levees. The ex-Presi- 
dentess had presided at her husband's dinner-parties, 
and had invited the wives of all the men who were to 
be guests ; Mrs. Monroe stayed away from the dinner- 
' parties, and so the wives were left at home. Add to 
this that her health was by no means strong, and it 
is plain that there was great ground for a spasm of 
unpopularity. She, however, outlived it, re-estab- 
lished her social relations, gave fortnightly receptions, 
and won much admiration, which she probably de- 
served. She was by birth a Miss Kortwright, of New 
York, a niece of General Knox, and when she accom- 
panied her husband on his embassy to Paris she had 
there been known as " la belle Americaine." She was 
pronounced by observers in later life to be "a most 
regal-looking lady," and her manners were described 
as "very gracious." At her final levee in the White 
House "her dress was superb black velvet; neck and 

375 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

arms bare, and beautifully formed; her hair in puffs, 
and dressed high on the head, and ornamented with 
white ostrich plumes; around her neck an elegant 
pearl necklace." Her two fair daughters — her only 
children, Mrs. Hay and Mrs. Gouverneur — assisted at 
this reception. 

Such was the hostess, but her drawing-rooms, by 
all contemporary accounts, afforded a curious social 
medley. The well-defined gentry of the Revolution- 
ary period was disappearing, and the higher average 
of dress and manners had not begun to show itself — 
that higher average which has since been rapidly de- 
veloped by the influence of railroads and newspapers, 
joined with much foreign travel and a great increase 
in wealth. It was a period when John Randolph y^as 
allowed to come to dinner-parties '<fcn a rough, coarse, 
short hunting-coat, with small-clothes and boots, and 
over his boots a pair of coarse coating leggings, tied 
with strings around his legs." At Presidential re- 
ceptions, in the words of an eye-witness, ' ' ambassa- 
dors and consuls, members of Congress and officers* 
of the army and navy, greasy boots and silk stock- 
ings, Virginia buckskins and Yankee cowhides, all 
mingled in ill-assorted and fantastic groups." 

Houses in Washington had become much larger 
than formerly, and a similar expansion had been seen 
in the scale of entertainments. It is not uncommon 
to find records of evening parties, at which five or 
six hundred persons were present, filling five or six 
rooms. When John Quincy Adams, then Secretary 
of State, gave a reception to the newly arrived hero, 
General Andrew Jackson, eight rooms were opened, 
and there were a thousand guests. It was regarded 
as the finest entertainment ever given in Washington, 

376 



THE ERA OF GOOD FEELING 

and showed, in the opinion of Senator Mills, of Mas- 
sachusetts, "taste, elegance, and good sense" on the 
part of Mrs. Adams. Elsewhere he pronounces her 
"a very pleasant and agreeable woman," but adds, 
' ' the Secretary has no talent to entertain a mixed 
company, either by conversation or manners." 
Other agreeable houses were that of Bagot, the Brit- 
ish Minister, whose wife was a niece of the Duke of 
Wellington, and that of M. Hyde de Neuville, the 
French Minister, each house being opened for a week- 
ly reception, whereas the receptions at the White 
House took place but once a fortnight. At these en- 
tertainments they had music, cards, and dancing — 
country-dances, cotillions, with an occasional Scotch 
reel. It was noticed with some surprise that even 
New England ladies would accept the hospitalities of 
Madame de Neuville on Saturday evenings, and would 
dance on what they had been educated to regard as 
holy time. 

Among the most conspicuous of these ladies was 
Mrs. Jonathan Russell, of Boston, full of sense and 
information, but charged with some eccentricities of 
costume; the reigning belle seems to have been the 
wife of Commodore Hull; and one of the most con- 
spicuous figures was Miss Randolph, of Virginia, 
daughter of the governor of that State and grand- 
daughter of ex-President Jefferson — a damsel who 
had plenty of brains, and could talk politics with any- 
body, but was no favorite with the ladies. Among 
the men, John Randolph was the most brilliant and 
interesting, and all the more so from his wayward- 
ness and insolence. In public life he preceded Cal- 
houn in the opinions which have made the latter fa- 
mous; and in private life he could, if he chose, be de- 

.5 377 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

lightful. "He is now," Mr. Mills writes to his wife 
in 1822, "what he used to be in his best days — in 
good spirits, with fine manners and the most fasci- 
nating conversation. I would give more to have 
you see him than any man living on the earth." 
Add to these Clay, Webster, Crawford, Van Buren, 
Rufus King, and many other men of marked ability, 
but of varied social aptitude, and we have the Wash- 
ington of that day. By way of background there 
was the ever-present shadow of slavery; and there 
were occasional visits from Indian delegations, who 
gave war-dances before the White House in the full 
glory of nakedness and paint. 

In considering this social development we must re- 
member that under Monroe's administration Ameri- 
can literature may be said to have had its birth. 
Until about this time prose and verse were mainly 
political; and the most liberal modern collection 
would hardly now borrow a single poem from the 
little volume called the Columbian Oracle, in which 
were gathered, during the year 1794, the choicest ef- 
fusions of Dwight and Humphreys, Barlow and Fre- 
neau. Fisher Ames, perhaps the most accomplished 
of the Federalists, and the only one who took the 
pains to make "American Literature" the theme of 
an esssay, had declared, in 1808, that such a literary 
product would never exist until the course of democ- 
racy should be ended and despotism should have 
taken its place. " Shall we match Joel Barlow against 
Homer or Hesiod?" he asked. "Can Thomas Paine 
contend with Plato ? . . . Liberty has never lasted long 
in a democracy, nor has it ever ended in anything 
better than despotism. With the change of our gov- 
ernment, our manners and sentiments will change. 

378 



THE ERA OF GOOD FEELING 

As soon as our emperor has destroyed his rivals and 
established order in his army, he will desire to see 
splendor in his court, and to occupy his subjects with 
the cultivation of the sciences." 

It was something when the matter of a national 
literature came to be treated, not thus despairingly, 
but jocosely. This progress found a voice, four years 
later, in Edward Everett, who, in his Cambridge poem 
on "American Poets" (1812), prophesied with a little 
more of hope. He portrayed, indeed, with some hu- 
mor, the difficulties of the native bard, since he must 
deal with the Indian names, of which nobody then 
dreamed that they could ever be thought tuneful; 

"A different scene our native poet shames 
With barbarous titles and with savage names. 
When the warm bard his country's worth would tell, 
Lo Mas-sa-chu-setts' length his lines must swell. 
Would he the gallant tales of war rehearse, 
'Tis graceful Bunker fills the polished verse. 
Sings he, dear land, those lakes and streams of thine, 
Some mild Memphremagog murmurs in his line, 
Some Ameriscoggin dashes by his way. 
Or smooth Connecticut softens in his lay. 
Would he one verse of easy movement frame, 
The map will meet him with a hopeless name; 
Nor can his pencil sketch one perfect act 
But vulgar history mocks him with a fact." 

Still, he thought, something might be done by- 
and-by, even with materials so rough: 

"Oh yes! in future days our western lyres, 
Tuned to new themes, shall glow with purer fires. 
Clothed with the charms, to grace their later rhyme, 
Of every former age and foreign clime. 
Then Homer's arms shall ring in Bunker's shock, 
And Virgil's wanderer land on Plymouth rock; 
379 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

Then Dante's knights before Quebec shall fall, 
And Charles's trump on trainband chieftains call. 
Our mobs shall wear the wreaths of Tasso's Moors, 
And Barbary's coast shall yield to Baltimore's. 
Here our own bays some native Pope shall grace, 
And lovelier beauties fill Belinda's place." 

It was all greatly applauded, no doubt, as in the 
best vein of the classic Everett; and it was in Mon- 
roe's time, five or ten years later, that the fulfilment 
actually began. He certainly could not be called an 
emperor, nor could his court be termed splendid ; yet 
it was under this plain potentate that a national lit- 
erature was born. 

The Englishman Sydney Smith wrote in 1818, one 
year after Monroe's accession to office: "There does 
not appear to be in America at this time one man 
of any considerable talents." But an acuter and 
severer literary critic, Lord Jeffrey, wrote, four years 
later (January 27, 1822): "The true hope of the 
world is with you in America— in your example now, 
and in fifty years more, I hope, your influence and 
actual power." It was midway between these two 
dates that the veteran publisher Mr. S. G. Goodrich, 
in his Recollections, placed the birth- time of a 
national literature. "During this period," he says, 
"we began to have confidence in American genius, 
and to dream of literary ambition." The North 
American Review was established in 181 5; Bryant's 
Thanatopsis appeared in 181 7; Irving' s Sketch Book 
in 1818; Cooper's Spy in 1822! When Monroe went 
out of office, in 1825, Emerson was teaching school, 
Whittier was at work on his father's farm, Haw- 
thorne and Longfellow were about to graduate from 
college; but American literature was born. 

380 



THE ERA OF GOOD FEEL1N(; 

People still maintained — as a few yet hold — that 
these various authors succeeded in spite of the na- 
tional atmosphere, not by means of it. It seems to 
me easy to show, on the contrary, that they all im- 
pressed themselves on the world chiefly by using the 
materials they found at home. Longfellow, at first 
steeped in European influences, gained in strength 
from the time he touched his native soil; nor did he 
find any difficulty in weaving into melodious verse 
those Indian names which had appalled Everett. 
Irving, the most exotic of all these writers, really 
made his reputation by his use of what has been call- 
ed "the Knickerbocker legend." He did not create 
the traditions of the Hudson; they created him. 
Mrs. Josiah Quincy, sailing up that river in 1786, 
when Irving was a child three years old, records that 
the captain of the sloop had a legend, either super- 
natural or traditional, for every scene, "and not a 
mountain reared its head unconnected with some 
marvellous story." The legends were all there ready 
for Irving, just as the New England legends were 
waiting for Whittier. Once let the man of genius 
be born, and his own soil was quite able to furnish 
the food that should rear him. 

Apart from this social and literary progress, two 
especial points marked the administration of Monroe, 
both being matters whose importance turned out to 
be far greater than any one had suspected. The 
first was the introduction of a definite term of office 
for minor civil officers. When the First Congress 
asserted the right of the President to remove such 
officials at all, it was thought a dangerous power. In 
practice that power had been but little used, and 
scarcely ever for political purposes, when William H. 

381 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

Crawford, Secretary of the Treasury, was touched with 
Presidential ambition. Most of the minor officials 
being then in his department, he conceived the plan 
of pushing through a bill to make them removable 
every four years. It seemed harmless. The ap- 
parent object was to get rid of untrustworthy rev- 
enue officers. It was enacted with so little discus- 
sion that Benton's Abridgment of Debates does not 
mention its passage. It was signed by the Presi- 
dent "unwarily," as John Quincy Adams tells us, on 
May 15, 1820; and instantly, as the same authority 
asserts, all the Treasury officials became "ardent 
Crawfordites." Jefferson and Madison utterly dis- 
approved of the new system; so did Adams, so did 
Calhoun, so did Webster; but it remained unchanged 
until the passage of the Civil Service Act in 1883. 

It so happens that this law has not usually been 
identified with the period of Monroe; it was enact- 
ed so quietly that its birthday was forgotten. Not 
so with another measure, which was not indeed a 
law, but merely the laying down of a principle, ever 
since known as the "Monroe doctrine"; this being 
simply a demand of non-interference by foreign na- 
tions with the affairs of the two American continents. 
There has been a good deal of dispute as to the real 
authorship of this announcement, Charles Francis 
Adams claiming it for his father, and Charles Sumner 
for the English statesman Canning. Dr. Daniel C. 
Oilman, however, in his memoir of President Monroe, 
has shown with exhaustive research that this doctrine 
had grown up gradually into a national tradition be- 
fore Monroe's time, and that he merely formulated 
it and made it a matter of distinct record. The whole 
statement is contained in a few detached passages of 

382 



THE ERA OF GOOD FEELING 

his message of December 2, 1823. In this he an- 
nounces that "the American continents, by the free 
and independent condition which they have assumed 
and maintain, are not to be considered as subjects for 
colonization by European powers." Further on he 
points out that the people of the United States have 
kept aloof from European dissensions, and ask only 
in return that North and vSouth America should be 
equally let alone. " We should consider any attempt 
on their part to extend their system to any portion 
of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and 
safety" ; and while no objection is made to any exist- 
ing colony or dependency of theirs, yet any further 
intrusion or interference would be regarded as ' ' the 
manifestation of an unfriendly spirit towards the 
United States." This, in brief, is the "Monroe doc- 
trine" as originally stated; and it will always remain 
a singular fact that this President — the least original 
or commanding of those who early held that office — 
should yet be the only one whose name is identified 
with the most distinctive doctrine regarding Ameri- 
can foreign relations. 

Apart from this, IMonroe's messages, which fill as 
many pages as those of any two of his predecessors, 
are conspicuously hard reading; and the only por- 
tions to W'hich a student of the present day can turn 
with any fresh interest are those w^hich measure the 
steady progress of the nation. "Twenty-five years 
ago," he could justly say — looking back upon his 
own first diplomatic achievement — "the river Mis- 
sissippi was shut up, and our western brethren had 
no outlet for their commerce. What has been the 
progress since that time? The river has not only 
become the property of the United States from its 

383 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

source to the ocean, with all its tributary streams 
(with the exception of the upper part of the Red 
River only), but Louisiana, with a fair and liberal 
boundary on the western side and the Floridas on 
the eastern, have been ceded to us. The United 
States now enjoy the complete and uninterrupted 
sovereignty over the whole territory from St. Croix 
to the Sabine." This was written March 4, 182 1. 
Nevertheless, the President could not, even then, 
give his sanction to any national efforts for the im- 
provement of this vast domain; and he vetoed, dur- 
ing the following year, the " Cumberland Road "bill, 
which would have led the way, he thought, to a 
wholly unconstitutional system of internal improve- 
ments. With this exception his administration came 
into no very marked antagonism to public senti- 
ment, and even in dealing with this he went to no 
extremes, but expressed willingness that the national 
road should be repaired, not extended. 

And while he looked upon the past progress of the 
nation with wonder, its destiny was to him a sealed 
book. Turning from all this record of past surprises, 
he could find no better plan for the future develop- 
ment of the post-office department, for instance, than 
to suggest that all the mails of the nation might 
profitably be carried thenceforward on horseback. 
As a crowning instance of how little a tolerably en- 
lightened man may see into the fviture, it would be 
a pity not to quote the passage from his veto message 
of May 4, 1822: 

" Unconnected with passengers and other objects, it can- 
not be doubted that the mail itself may be carried in every 
part of our Union, with nearly as much economy and greater 
despatch, on horseback, than in a stage; and in many parts 

.^84 



THE ERA OF GOOD FEELING 

with much greater. In every part of the Union in which 
stages can be preferred the roads are sufficiently good, pro- 
vided those which serve for every other purpose will ac- 
commodate them. In every other part, where horses alone 
are used, if other people pass them on horseback, surely 
the mail-carrier can. For an object so simple and so easy 
in the execution it would doubtless excite surprise if it 
should be thought proper to appoint commissioners to lay 
off the country on a great scheme of improvement, with the 
power to shorten distances, reduce heights, level moun- 
tains, and pave surfaces." 

Those who have traversed on horseback, even 
within a generation, those miry Virginia roads and 
those treacherous fords with which President Mon- 
roe was so famiHar, will best appreciate this project 
for the post-office accommodations of a continent — a 
plan "so simple and easy in the execution." Since 
then the country has indeed been laid off " in a great 
scheme of improvement," distances have been short- 
ened, heights reduced, and surfaces paved, even as 
he suggested, but under circumstances which no 
President in 1822 could possibly have conjectured. 
Indeed, it was not till the following administration, 
that of John Quincy Adams, that the first large im- 
pulse of expansion was really given and the great 
western march began. 



XVII 
THE GREAT WESTERN MARCH 

THE four years' administration of John Quincy 
Adams is commonly spoken of as a very unin- 
teresting period, but it was in one respect more im- 
portant than the twenty years that went before it 
or the ten years that followed. For the first time 
the inhabitants of the United States began to learn 
in how very large a country they lived. From oc- 
cupying a mere strip of land on the Atlantic they 
had spread already through New York and Ohio; 
but it was by detached emigrations, of which the 
nation was hardly conscious, by great single waves 
of population sweeping here and there. After 1825, 
this development became a self-conscious and delib- 
erate thing, recognized and legislated for, though 
never systematically organized by the nation. When, 
between 1820 and 1830, Michigan Territory increased 
260 per cent., Illinois 180 per cent., Arkansas Terri- 
tory 142 per cent., and Indiana 133 per cent., it in- 
dicated not a mere impulse but a steady progress, 
not a wave but a tide. Now that we are accustomed 
to the vast statistics of to-day, it may not seem ex- 
citing to know that the population of the whole na- 
tion rose from nearly ten millions (9,633,822) in 1820 
to nearly thirteen (12,866,020) in 1830; but this gain 
of one- third was at the time the most astounding 

386 



THE GREAT WESTERN MARCH 

demonstration of national progress. It enables us 
to understand the immense importance attached in 
John Quincy Adams's time to a phrase now common- 
place and almost meaningless — ' ' internal improve- 
ments." It is true that during his term of office 
more commercial treaties were negotiated than under 
all his predecessors; but this, after all, was a minor 
benefit. The foreign commerce of the United States 
is now of itself , comparatively speaking, subordinate; 
it is our vast internal development that makes us a 
nation. It is as the great epoch of internal improve- 
ments that the four years from 1825 to 1829 will for- 
ever be momentous in the history of the United States. 
In 1825 the nation was in the position of a young 
man who has become aware that he owns a vast 
estate, but finds it to be mostly unproductive, and 
hardly even marketable. Such a person sometimes 
hits upon an energetic agent, who convinces him that 
the essential thing is to build a few roads, bridge a 
few streams, and lay out some building lots. It was 
just in this capacity of courageous adviser that John 
Quincy Adams was quite ready to offer himself. On 
the day of his inauguration the greater part of Ohio 
was yet covered with forests, and Illinois was a wilder- 
ness. The vast size of the country was still a source 
rather of anxiety than of pride. Monroe had ex- 
pressed the fear that no repubUcan government could 
safely control a nation reaching so far as the Mis- 
sissippi; and Livingston, after negotiating for the 
purchase of Louisiana, had comforted himself with 
the thought that a large part of it might probably be 
resold. At that time this enormous annexation was 
thought to endanger the very existence of the origi- 
nal thirteen States. 

387 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

This was perhaps nowhere more frankly stated than 
by an able Fourth-of-July orator at Salem, Massa- 
chusetts, in 1813, Benjamin R. Nichols. He declares, 
in this address, that to admit to the Union new 
States formed out of new territory is "to set up a 
principle which, if submitted to, will make us more 
dependent than we were as colonies of Great Britain. 
If a majority of Congress have a right of making new 
States where they please, we shall probably soon 
hear of States formed for us in East and West Florida ; 
and, should it come within the scope of the policy of 
our rulers, of others as far as the Pacific Ocean. If 
all this be right, the consequence is that the people 
of New England, in case of any disturbances in these 
newly created States, may, under pretences of sup- 
pressing insurrections, be forced to march, in obedi- 
ence to the Constitution, to the remotest corner of 
the globe." In other words, that which now makes 
the crowning pride of an American citizen, that the 
States of the Union are spread from the Atlantic to 
the Pacific, was then held up by a patriotic Federal- 
ist as the very extreme of danger. The antidote to 
this deadly peril, the means of establishing some 
communication with these "remotest corners of the 
globe," had necessarily to be found, first of all, in 
internal improvements. At least, under these cir- 
cumstances of alarm, a highway or two might be held 
a reasonable proposition; and the new President, in 
his inaugural address, approached the subject with 
something of the lingering stateliness of those days: 

"The magnificence and splendor of their pubHc works are 
among the imperishable glories of the ancient republics. 
The roads and aqueducts of Rome have been the admira- 
tion of all after-ages, and have survived thousands of years, 

388 



THE GREAT WESTERN MARCH 

after all her conquests have been swallowed up in despot- 
ism or become the spoil of barbarians. Some diversity of 
opinion has prevailed with regard to the powers of Congress 
for legislation upon subjects of this nature. The most re- 
spectful deference is due to doubts originating in pure pa- 
triotism, and sustained by venerated authority. But nearly 
twenty years have passed since the construction of the first 
national road was commenced. The authority for its con- 
struction was then unquestioned. To how many thousands 
of our countrymen has it proved a benefit ? To what single 
individual has it ever proved an injury?" 

It has already been pointed out that when John 
Quincy Adams became President the nation had 
been governed for a quarter of a century by Demo- 
cratic administrations, acting more and more on 
FederaHst principles. The tradition of State rights 
had steadily receded, and the reality of a strong and 
expanding nation had taken its place. The very 
men who had at first put into the most definite shape 
these State - rights opinions had, by their action, 
done most to overthrow them, Jefferson above all. 
By the purchase of Louisiana he had, perhaps un- 
consciously, done more than any President before 
him to make national feeling permanent. Having, 
by a happy impulse, and in spite of all his own 
theories, enormously enlarged the joint territory, he 
had recognized the need of opening and developing 
the new possession ; he had set the example of pro- 
posing national appropriations for roads, canals, and 
even education; and had given his sanction (March 
24, 1806) to building a national road from Maryland 
to Ohio, first obtaining the consent of the States 
through which it was to pass. To continue this 
policy would, he admitted, require constitutional 
amendments, but in his closing message he favored 

389 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

such alterations. It was but a step from favoring 
constitutional amendments for this purpose to doing 
without them; Jefferson, Madison, Monroe had done 
the one, John Quincy Adams did the other. 

Of course it took the nation by surprise. Noth- 
ing astonishes people more than to be taken at their 
word and have their own theories energetically put 
in practice. Others had talked in a general way 
about internal improvements; under President Mon- 
roe there had even been created (April 30, 1824) a 
national board to plan them ; but John Quincy Adams 
really meant to have them; and his very first mes- 
sage looked formidable to those who supposed that 
because he had broken with the Federalists he was 
therefore about to behave like an old-fashioned 
Democrat. In truth he was more new-fashioned 
than anybody. This is the way he committed him- 
self in this first message: 

"While foreign nations, less blessed with that freedom 
which is power than ourselves, are advancing with gigantic 
strides in the career of public improvement, were we to 
slumber in indolence, or fold up our arms and proclaim 
to the world that we are palsied by the will of our constitu- 
ents, would it not be to cast away the bounties of Provi- 
dence, and doom ourselves to perpetual inferiority? In the 
course of the year now drawing to its close we have taken, 
under the auspices and at the expense of one State of this 
Union, a new university unfolding its portals to the sons of 
science, and holding up the torch of human improvement to 
eyes that seek the light. We have seen, under the persevering 
and enlightened enterprise of another State, the waters of 
our Western lakes mingle with those of the ocean. If un- 
dertakings like these have been accomplished in the com- 
pass of a few years by the authority of single members of our 
confederation, can we, the representative authorities of the 
whole Union, fall behind our fellow-servants in the exercise 

390 



THE GREAT WESTERN MARCH 

of the trust committed to us for the benefit of our common 
sovereign, by the accomplishment of works important to the 
whole, and to which neither the authority nor the resources 
of any one State can be adequate?" 

Nor was this all. It is curious to see that the Presi- 
dent's faithful ally, Richard Rush, Secretary of the 
Treasury, went far beyond his chief in the tone of 
his recommendations, and drifted into what would 
now be promptly labelled as communism. When 
we read as an extreme proposition in these days, in 
the middle of some mildly socialistic manifesto, the 
suggestion that there should be a national bureau 
"whereby new fields can be opened, old ones develop- 
ed, and every labor can be properly directed and 
located," we fancy it a novelty. But see how utter- 
ly Mr. Rush surpassed these moderate proposals in 
one of his reports as Secretary of the Treasury. He 
said that it was the duty of government 

' ' to augment the number and variety of occupations for its 
inhabitants; to hold out to every degree of labor and to 
every manifestation of skill its appropriate object and in- 
ducement ; to organize the whole labor of a country ; to en- 
tice into the widest ranges its mechanical and intellectual 
capacities, instead of suffering them to slumber; to call 
forth, wherever hidden, latent ingenuity, giving to effort 
activity and to emulation ardor; to create employment for 
the greatest amount of numbers by adapting it to the di- 
versified faculties, propensities, and situations of men, so 
that every particle of ability, every shade of genius, may 
come into requisition." 

Let us now turn to the actual advances made under 
the guidance of Mr. Adams. Nothing in the history 
of the globe is so extraordinary in its topographical 
and moral results as the vast western march of the 

391 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

American people within a hundred years. Let us 
look, for instance, at some contemporary map of 
what constituted the northern part of the United 
States in 1798. The western boundary of visible 
settlement is the Genesee River of New York. The 
names on the Hudson are like the names of to-day; 
all beyond is strange. No railroad, no canal; only a 
turnpike running to the Genesee, and with no farther 
track to mark the way through the forest to ' ' Buffa- 
loe," on the far-off lake. Along this turnpike are 
settlements — -"Schenectady," "Canajohary," "Schuy- 
ler, or Utica," "Fort Stenwick, or Rome," "Oneida 
Cassle," "Onondaga Cassle," "Geneva," and " Can- 
andargue," where the road turns north to Lake 
Ontario. Forests cover all western New York, all 
northwestern Pennsylvania. Far off in Ohio is a 
detached region indicated as "the Connecticut Re- 
serve, conceded to the families who had been ruined 
during the war of independence" — whence our mod- 
ern phrase " Western Reserve." The summary of the 
whole map is that the nation still consists of the 
region east of the Alleghanies, with a few outlying 
settlements, and nothing more. 

Now pass over twenty years. In the map pre- 
fixed to William Darby's Tour from- New York to 
Detroit, in 1818 — this Darby being the author of an 
emigrant's guide and a member of the New York 
Historical Society — we find no State west of the 
Mississippi except Missouri, and scarcely any towns 
in Indiana or Illinois. Michigan Territory is desig- 
nated, but across the whole western half of it is the 
inscription, "This part very imperfectly known." 
All beyond Lake Michigan and all west of the Mis- 
sissippi is a nameless waste, except for a few names 

392 



THE G R E A T W E S T \i R N MARCH 

of rivers and of Indian villages. This marks the 
progress — and a very considerable progress — of 
twenty years. Writing from Buffalo (now spelled 
correctly), Darby says, "The beautiful and highly 
cultivated lands of the strait of Erie are now a speci- 
men of what in forty years will be the landscape from 
Erie to Chicaga [sic]. It is a very gratifying antici- 
pation to behold in fancy the epoch to come when 
this augmenting mass of the population will enjoy, 
in the interior of this vast continent, a choice col- 
lection of immense marts where the produce of the 
banks of innumerable rivers and lakes can be ex- 
changed." 

Already, it seems, travellers and map-makers had 
got from misspelling " Buffaloe" to misspelling " Chi- 
caga." It was a great deal. The Edinburgh Review 
for that same year (June, 1818), in reviewing Birk- 
beck's once celebrated Travels in America, said: 

"Where is this prodigious increase of numbers, this vast 
extension of dominion, to end ? What bounds has nature 
set to the progress of this mighty nation? Let our jealousy- 
burn as it may, let our intolerance of America be as unrea- 
sonably violent as we please, still it is plain that she is a 
power in spite of us, rapidly rising to supremacy; or, at least, 
that each year so mightily augments her strength as to over- 
take, by a most sensible distance, even the most formidable 
of her competitors." 

This was written, it must be remembered, when 
the whole population of the United States was but 
little more than nine millions, or less than the num- 
ber now occupying New York and Massachusetts 
taken together. 

What were the first channels for this great trans- 
fer of population? They were the great turnpike- 
^6 Z93 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

road up the Mohawk Valley, in New York ; and, farther 
south, the "National Road," whieh ended at Wheel- 
ing, Virginia. Old men, now or recently living — 
as, for instance, Sewall Newhouse, the trapper and 
trap-maker of Oneida — can recall the long lines of 
broad-wheeled wagons, drawn by ten horses, forty 
of these teams sometimes coming in close succession ; 
the stages, six of which were sometimes in sight at 
once; the casualties, the break-downs, the sloughs of 
despond, the passengers at work with fence-rails to 
pry out the vehicle from a mud-hole. These sights, 
now vanishing or gone upon the shores of the Pacific, 
were then familiar in the heart of w^hat is now the 
East. This was the tide flowing westward; while 
eastward, on the other hand, there soon began a 
counter-current of flocks and herds sent from the 
new settlements to supply the older States. As 
early as 1824 Timothy Flint records meeting a drove 
of more than a thousand cattle and swine, rough and 
shaggy as wolves, guided towards the Philadelphia 
market by a herdsman looking as untamed as them- 
selves, and coming from Ohio — "a name which still 
sounded in our ears," Flint says, "like the land of 
savages." 

The group so well known in our literature, the 
emigrant family, the way-side fire, the high-peaked 
wagon, the exhausted oxen — this picture recedes 
steadily in space as we come nearer to our own time. 
In 1788 it set off with the first settlers from Massa- 
chusetts to seek Ohio; in 1798 it was just leaving 
the Hudson to ascend the Mohawk River; in 181 5 
the hero of Laivrie Todd saw it at Rochester, New 
York; in 1819 Darby met it near Detroit, Michigan; 
in 1824 Flint saw it in Missouri; in 1831 Alexander 

394 



THE GREAT WESTERN MARCH 



depicted it in Tennessee; in 1843 Margaret Fuller 
sketched it beyond Chicago, Illinois; in 1856 I my- 
self saw it in Nebraska and Kansas; in 1864 Clar- 
ence King described it in his admirable sketch, "Way- 
side Pikes," in California; in 1882 Mrs. Leighton, in 
her graphic letters, pictures it at Puget Sound, be- 
yond which, as it has reached the Pacific, it cannot 
advance. From this continent the emigrant group in 
its original form has almost vanished; the process of 
spreading emigration by steam is less picturesque 
but more' rapid. 

MOVEMENT OF CENTRE OP POPULATION SINCE 1790. 

Approximate Location by Important Town 



Census 


North 


West 


Year 


Latitude 


Longitude 


1790 


39° 15' 


■;" 


76° 11' 2" 


1800 


39° 16' 


i" 


76° 56' s" 


1810 


39° II 


5' 


77° 37' 2" 


1820 


39° 5 


7" 


78° is' 0" 


1830 


38° S7' 





79° 16' 9 


1840 


30° 2 





80° 18' 0" 


1850 


38° S9' 





81° 19' 0" 


i860 


39° 


4 


82° 48' 8" 


1870 


39° I 2 





83° 35' 7" 


1880 


39° 4' 


I 


84° 30' 7 ' 


1890 


39° 11' 


9 


85° 32 9" 


1900 


30° 0' 


36" 


85° 48' 54" 



Twenty-three miles east of Baltimore, Md. 
Eighteen miles west of Baltimore, Md. 
Forty iTiiles northwest by west of Washington, D. C. 
Sixteen miles north of Woodstock, Va. 
Nineteen miles west-southwest of Moorefield, W. Va. 
Sixteen miles south of Clarksburg, W. Va. 
Twenty-three miles southeast of Parkersburg,W. Va. 
Twenty miles south of Chillicothe, O. 
Forty-eight miles east by north of Cincinnati, O. 
Eight miles west by south of Cincinnati, O. 
Twenty miles east of Columbus, Ind. 
Six miles southwest of Columbus, Ind. 



The successive volumes of the United States census 
to 1900 give, with accuracy and fulness of detail, 
the panorama of this vast westward march. It is a 
matter of national pride to see how its everchanging 
phases have been caught and photographed in these 
masterly volumes, in a way such as the countries of 
the older world have never equalled, though it would 
seem so much easier to depict their more fixed con- 
ditions. The Austrian newspapers complain that no 
one in that nation knows at this moment, for instance, 
the centre of Austrian population ; while the succes- 
sive centres for the United States are here exhibited 
on a chart with a precision as great, and an impres- 

395 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

siveness to the imagination as vast, as when astrono- 
mers represent for us the successive positions of a 
planet. Like the shadow thrown by the hand of 
some great clock, this inevitable point advances year 
by year across the continent, sometimes four miles 
a year, sometimes eight miles, but always advancing. 
And with this striking summary the census report 
gives us a series of successive representations on 
colored charts, at ten-year intervals, of the gradual 
expansion and filling in of population over the 
whole territory of the United States. No romance 
is so fascinating as the thoughts suggested by these 
silent sheets, each line and tint representing the un- 
spoken sacrifices and fatigues of thousands of name- 
less men and women. Let us consider for a moment 
these successive indications. 

In the census table for 1 790 the whole population is 
on the eastern slope of the Appalachian range, except 
a slight spur of emigration reaching westward from 
Pennsylvania and Virginia and a detached settle- 
ment in Kentucky. The average depth of the strip 
of civilization, measuring back from the Atlantic 
westward, is but three hundred and fifty-five miles. 
In 1800 there is some increase of population within 
the old lines and a western movement along the 
Mohawk in New York State, while the Kentucky 
group of inhabitants has spread down into Tennessee. 
In 1 8 10 all New York, Pennsylvania, and Kentucky 
are well sprinkled with population, which begins to 
invade southern Ohio also, while the territory of 
Orleans has a share; although Michigan, Indiana, 
Illinois, Missouri, the Mississippi territory — includ- 
ing Mississippi and Alabama — are still almost or 
quite untouched. In 1820 Ohio, or two-thirds of it, 

396 



THE GREAT WESTERN MARCH i 

shows signs of civilized occupation; and the settle- 
ments around Detroit, which so impressed Darby, 
have joined those in Ohio; Tennessee is well occu- 
pied, as is southern Indiana ; while Illinois, Wisconsin, 
Alabama, have little rills of population adjoining the 
Indian tribes, which are not yet removed, and still re- 
tard southern settlements. In 1830 — -Adams's ad- 
ministration being now closed— Indiana is nearly cov- 
ered with population, Illinois more than half; there 
is hardly any unsettled land in Ohio, while Michigan 
is beginning to be occupied. Population has spread 
up the Missouri to the north of Kansas River; and 
farther south, Louisiana, Alabama, and Arkansas be- 
gin to show for something. But even in 1830 the 
centre of population is in Moorefield, West Virginia, 
and is not yet moving westward at the rate of more 
than five miles a year. 

This year of 1830 lying beyond the term of John 
Quincy Adams's administration, I shall here follow 
the statistics of the great migration no farther. Turn 
now to his annual messages, and see how, instead of 
the doubts or cautious hints of his predecessors, these 
State papers are filled with suggestions of those spe- 
cial improvements which an overflowing Treasury 
enabled him to secure. In his third annual message, 
for instance, he alludes to reports ready for Congress, 
and in some cases acted upon, in respect to the con- 
tinuance of the national road from Cumberland east- 
ward and to Columbus and St. Louis westward; 
other reports as to a national road from Washington 
to Buffalo, and a post-road from Baltimore to Phila- 
delphia; as to a canal from Lake Pontchartrain to 
the Mississippi ; as to another to be cut across Florida ; 
another to connect Mobile and Pensacola; another to 

397 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

unite the Coosa and Hiawassee rivers in Alabama. 
There are reports also on Cape Fear ; on the Swash in 
Pamlico Sound; on La Plaisance Bay in Michigan; 
on the Kennebec and Saugatuck rivers; on the har- 
bors of Edgartown, Hyannis, and Newburyport. What 
has been already done, he says, in these and similar 
directions, has cost three or four millions of dollars 
annually, but it has been done without creating a 
dollar of taxes or debt; nor has it diminished the 
payment of previous debts, which have indeed been 
reduced to the extent of sixteen millions of dollars in 
three years. But this w^as only a partial estimate. 
During the whole administration of John Quincy 
Adams, according to the American Anmtal Register, 
more than a million of dollars w^ere devoted to the 
light-house system ; half a million to public buildings ; 
two millions to arsenals and armories; three millions 
to coast fortifications; three millions to the navy; 
and four millions to internal improvements and scien- 
tific surveys. Including smaller items, nearly four- 
teen millions w^ere expended under him for perma- 
nent objects, besides five millions of dollars for pen- 
sions ; a million and a half for the Indian tribes ; thirty 
millions for the reduction of the public debt; and a 
surplus of five millions for his successor. Here was 
patriotic housekeeping indeed for the vast family of 
the nation, and yet this administration has very com- 
monly been passed over as belonging to those times 
of peace that have proverbially but few historians. 

Let us return to the actual progress of the great 
western march. The Ohio River being once reached, 
the main channel of emigration lay in the watercourses. 
Steam-boats as yet were but beginning their invasion, 
amid the general dismay and cursing of the popu- 

398 



THE GREAT WESTERN MARCH 

lation of boatmen that had rapidly established itself 
along the shore of every river. The early water life 
of the Ohio and its kindred streams was the very 
romance of emigration; no monotonous agriculture, 
no toilsome wood-chopping, could keep back the ad- 
venturous boys who found delight in the endless 
novelty, the alternate energy and repose of a float- 
ing existence on those delightful waters. The va- 
riety of river craft corresponded to the varied tastes 
and habits of the boatmen. There was the great 
barge with lofty deck, requiring twenty-five men to 
work it up-stream; there was the long keel-boat, 
carrying from fifteen to thirty tons; there was the 
Kentucky "broad-horn," compared by the emigrants 
of that day to a New England pigsty set afloat, and 
sometimes built one hundred feet long and carrving 
seventy tons; there was the "family boat," of like 
structure, and bearing a whole household, with cattle, 
hogs, horses, and sheep. Other boats were floating 
tin shops, blacksmiths' shops, whiskey shops, dry- 
goods shops. A few were propelled by horse-power. 
Of smaller vessels there were "covered sleds," "ferry 
flats," and "Alleghany skift's"; "pirogues" made 
from two tree trunks, or "dug-outs" consisting of 
one. These boats would set out from Pittsburg for 
voyages of all lengths, sometimes extending over 
three thousand miles, and reaching points on the 
Missouri, Arkansas, and Red rivers. Boats came to 
St. Louis from Montreal with but few "portages" or 
"carries" on the way; and sometimes arrived from 
Mackinaw, when the streams were high and the 
morasses full, without being carried by hand at all. 

The crews were carefully chosen; a " Kentuck," or 
Kentuckian, was considered the best man at a pole, 

399 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

and a " Kanuck," or French Canadian, at the oar or 
the "cordelle," the rope used to haul a boat up- 
stream. Their talk was of the dangers of the river; 
of "planters and sawyers," meaning tree trunks em- 
bedded more or less firmly in the river; of "riffles," 
meaning ripples; and of "shoots," or rapids (French, 
chutes) . It was as necessary to have violins on board 
as to have whiskey, and all the traditions in song or 
picture of "the jolly boatmen" date back to that 
by-gone day. Between the two sides of the river 
there was already a jealousy. Ohio was called "the 
Yankee State" ; and Flint tells us that it was a stand- 
ing joke among the Ohio boatmen, when asked their 
cargo, to reply, "Pit-coal indigo, wooden nutmegs, 
straw baskets, and Yankee notions." The same au- 
thority describes this sort of questioning as being 
inexhaustible among the river people, and asserts 
that from one descending boat came this series of 
answers, all of which proved to be truthful: "Where 
are you from?" "Redstone." "What's your land- 
ing?" "Millstones." "What's your captain's name?" 
"Whetstone." "Where are you bound?" "To 
Limestone." 

All this panorama of moving life was brought near- 
ly to a close, during the younger Adams's administra- 
tion, by the introduction of steam-boats, though it 
was prolonged for a time upon the newly built canals. 
Steam-boats were looked upon, as Flint tells us, with 
"detestation" by the inhabitants, though they soon 
learned to depend upon them and to make social 
visits in them to friends a hundred miles away. In 
1812 Fulton's first western boat, the Orleans, went 
down the Ohio, and in 181 6 the Washington proved it- 
self able to stem the current in returning. But for 

400 



THE GREAT WESTERN MARCH 

a time canals spread more rapirlly than steam-boats. 
Gouverneur Morris had first suggested the Erie Canal 
in 1777, and Washington had indeed proposed a 
system of such waterways in 1774. But the first 
actual work of this kind in the United States was that 
dug around Turner's Falls, in Massachusetts, soon 
after 1792. In 1803 De Witt Clinton again proposed 
the Erie Canal. It was begun in 181 7, and opened 
July 4, 1825, being cut mainly through a wilderness. 
The effect produced on public opinion was absolutely 
startling. When men found that the time from Al- 
bany to Buffalo was reduced one-half, and that the 
freight on a ton of merchandise was cut down from 
$100 to $10, and ultimately to $3, similar enterprises 
sprang into being everywhere. The most conspicu-- 
ous of these was the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, from 
Georgetown to Pittsburg, which was surveyed and 
planned by the national board of internal improve- 
ments, created just before Mr. Adams's accession. 
On July 4, 1828, the first blow in the excavation was 
struck by the President. He had a habit of declin- 
ing invitations to agricultural fairs and all public ex- 
hibitions, but was persuaded to make a speech and 
put the first spade in the ground for this great enter- 
prise. The soil was for some reason so hard that it 
would scarcely give way, so the President took off his 
coat, and tried again and again, at last raising the 
sod, amid general applause. It was almost the only 
time during his arduous life when he paused to do a 
picturesque or symbolic act before the people. 

Thus, by various means, the great wave swept 
westward. Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Jer- 
sey filled up Ohio ; North Carolina and Virginia pop- 
ulated Kentucky and Tennessee; Canada sent its 

401 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

emigrants into Illinois and Indiana and all down the 
Mississippi. The new settlers, being once launched 
in the free career of the West, developed by degrees 
a new type of character. Everywhere there was a 
love of the frontier life, of distance, and of isolation, 
of "range," as the Kentuckians of that day called it. 
There was a charming side to it all. There was no 
more fascinating existence anywhere than that of the 
pioneer hunters in the yet unfelled forests, and the 
lasting popularity of Cooper's novels proves the per- 
manent spell exercised by this life over the imagina- 
tion. No time will ever diminish the picturesque- 
ness of Daniel Boone's career in Kentucky, for in- 
stance, amid the exquisite beauty of the regions near 
Lexington — woods carpeted with turf like an English 
park, free from underbrush, with stately trees of 
every variety, and fresh, clear streams everywhere; 
or beside the salt springs of the Licking Valley, where 
Simon Kenton saw from twenty to thirty thousand 
buffaloes congregated at a time. What were the 
tame adventures of Robin Hood to the occasion when 
these two pioneer hunters, Boone and Kenton, ap- 
proached the Licking Valley, each alone, from op- 
posite points, each pausing to reconnoitre before 
leaving the shelter of the woods, and each recogniz- 
ing the presence of another human being in the val- 
ley ? Then began a long series of manoeuvres on the 
part of each to discover who the other was, without 
self -betrayal ; and such was their skill that it took 
forty-eight hours before either could make up his 
mind that the other was a white man and a friend, 
not an Indian and a foe. 

But there was to all this picture a reverse side that 
was less charming. For those who were not content 

402 



THE GREAT WESTERN MAR C H 

to spend their lives as woodsmen in Kentucky, and 
preferred to seek (3hio as agriculturists, how much of 
sacrifice there was! — what weary years of cold, pov- 
erty, discomfort! This letter, quoted in Perkins's 
Fifty Years of Ohio, as written in 1818 from Marietta, 
gives a glimpse through the doorway of a thousand 
cabins : 

"Marietta I find a poor, muddy hole; the mud here is 
more disagreeable than snow in Massachusetts. My advice 
to all my friends is not to come to this country. There is 
not one in a hundred but what is discontented ; but they 
cannot get back, having spent all their property in getting 
here. It is the most broken country that I ever saw. Poor, 
lean pork at twelve cents; salt, four cents; poor, dry fish, 
twenty cents. The corn is miserable, and we cannot get it 
ground; we have to pound it. Those that have lanterns 
grate it. Rum, twenty-five cents a gill; sugar, thirty-seven 
cents a pound; and no molasses! This country has been 
the ruin of a great many poor people ; it has undone a great 
many poor souls forever." 

Meantime, at Washington, there had been a .great 
increase in wealth and social refinement since the 
earlier days. Josiah Quincy, in his Recollections of 
WasJiingtoii Society in 1826, presents for us a pol- 
ished and delightful community, compared to that 
which had preceded it. Himself a handsome young 
Bostonian, with the prestige of a name already noted, 
he found nothing but sunshine and roses in his path 
through the metropolis. Names now historic glitter 
through his pages; he went to balls under the escort 
of Mr. and Mrs. Daniel Webster; his first entertain- 
ment was at Mrs. William Wirt's, where he met Miss 
Henry, Patrick Henry's daughter, who played the 
piano and sang to the harp. The belles of the day 

403 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

smiled upon him ; Miss Catherine van Rensselaer, of 
Albany, and Miss Cora Livingston, the same who in 
her old age, as Mrs. Barton, sold the great Shake- 
spearian library to the city of Boston. The most con- 
spicuous married belle of that day was known as 
Mrs. Florida White, so called because her husband 
represented that region, then new and strange. More 
eccentric than this sobriquet were the genuine names 
in the household of Mrs. Peter, granddaughter of Mrs. 
Washington and the fiercest of Federalists, who had 
christened her daughters America, Columbia, and 
Britannia — the last by way of defiance, it was said, 
to Jefferson. With these various charmers Quincy 
attended many a ball in Washington, these enter- 
tainments then keeping modest hours — from eight to 
eleven. He saw a sight not then considered so mod- 
est — the introduction, in 1826, of the first waltz, 
danced with enthusiasm by Baron Stackelburg, who 
whirled through it without removing his huge dra- 
goon spurs, and was applauded at the end for the 
skill with which he avoided collisions that might 
have been rather murderous. 

The young Bostonian also went to dinner-parties; 
sometimes at the White House, either formal state 
dinners of forty gentlemen and ladies, or private oc- 
casions, less elaborate, where he alone among wit- 
nesses found the President "amusing." He gives 
also an agreeable picture of the home and household 
manners of Daniel Webster, not yet fallen into those 
questionable private habits which the French M. 
Bacourt, sixteen years afterwards, too ' faithfully 
chronicled. Quincy also found the Vice - president, 
John C. Calhoun, a man most agreeable in his own 
house, while Miss Calhoun had an admirable gift 

404 



THE GREAT WESTERN MARCH 

for political discussion. The presence of these emi- 
nent men lent a charm even to the muddy streets 
and scattered houses of the Washington of that day. 
The two branches of government then met in small, 
ill-arranged halls, the House of Representatives hav- 
ing huge pillars to intercept sight and sound, with 
no gallery for visitors, but only a platform but lit- 
tle higher than the floor. In this body the great 
Federal party had left scarcely a remnant of itself, 
Elisha Potter, of Rhode Island, describing vividly to 
Quincy a caucus held when the faithful few had been 
reduced to eleven, and could only cheer themselves 
with the thought that the Christian apostles, after 
the desertion of Judas, could number no more. The 
Houses of Congress were still rather an arena of de- 
bating than for set speeches, as now ; and they had their 
leaders, mostly now fallen into that oblivion which 
waits so surely on merely political fame. Daniel 
Webster, to be sure, was the great ornament of the 
Senate; but McDuffie, of South Carolina, and Storrs, 
(^f New York, members of the House, had then a 
national reputation for eloquence, though they now 
are but the shadows of names. To these must be 
added Archer, of Virginia, too generally designated 
as "Insatiate Archer," from his fatal long-winded- 
ness. 

For the first time in many years the White House 
was kept in decent order again; all about it had for 
years — if we may trust Samuel Breck's testimony — 
worn the slipshod, careless look of a Virginia plan- 
tation. Fence-posts fell and lay broken on the 
ground for months, although they could have been 
repaired in half an hour; and the grass of the lawns, 
cut at long intervals, was piled in large stacks before 

405 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

the drawing-room windows. Fifty thousand dollars 
spent on the interior in Monroe's time had produced 
only a slovenly splendor, while the fourteen thou- 
sand appropriated to Adams produced neatness, at 
least. Manners shared some of the improvement, in 
respect to order and decorum at least, though some- 
thing of the profuse Virginia cordiality may have been 
absent. It was an intermediate period, when, far 
more than now, the European forms were being tried, 
and sometimes found wanting. In Philadelphia, 
where the social ambition was highest, William 
Bingham had entertainments that were held to be 
the most showy in America. He had, as in England, 
a row of liveried servants, wh(3 repeated in loud tone, 
from one to another, the name of every guest. A 
slight circumstance put an end to the practice. On 
the evening of a ball an eminent physician, Dr. Kuhn, 
drove to the door with his step-daughter, and was 
asked his name by the lackey. "The doctor and 
Miss Peggy," was the reply. "The doctor and Miss 
Peggy" was echoed by the man at the door, and 
hence by successive stages to the drawing-room. The 
doctor and Miss Peggy (Miss Markoe, afterwards Mrs. 
Benjamin Franklin Bache) became the joke of the 
town ; and the practice was soon after changed, car- 
rying with it the humbler attempts at imitation in 
Washington. Samuel Breck, who tells the story, 
rejoices that among the other failures in aping for- 
eign manners were ' ' the repeated attempts of our 
young dandies to introduce the mustache on the 
upper lip." "And so," he adds, "with the broadcloth 
gaiters and other foreign costumes. They were neither 
useful nor ornamental, and would not take with us. 
So much the better." 

406 



THE GREAT WESTERN MARCH 

The President himself, in the midst of all this, 
lived a life so simple that the word Spartan hardly 
describes it. He was now sixty years old. Rising 
at four or five, even in winter, he often built his own 
fire, and then worked upon his correspondence and 
his journal, while the main part of the day was given 
to public affairs, these being reluctantly interrupted 
to receive a stream of visitors. In the evening he 
worked again, sometimes going to bed at eight or 
nine even in summer. His recreations were few — 
bathing in the Potomac before sunrise, and taking a 
walk at the same hour, or a ride later in the day, or 
sometimes the theatre, such as it was. For social 
life he had little aptitude, though he went through 
the forms of it. This is well illustrated by one singu- 
lar memorandum in his diary ; "I went out this 
evening in search of conversation, an art of w^hich I 
never had an adequate idea. ... I never knew how to 
make, control, or change it. I am by nature a silent 
animal, and my dear mother's constant lesson in 
childhood that little children should be seen and not 
heard confirmed me in what I now think a bad 
habit." 

It is to be observed that the influence of political 
wire-pulling first began to be seriously felt at this 
period. We commonly attribute its origin to Jack- 
son, but it really began, as was explained in a pre- 
vious chapter, with Crawford. As the end of Mon- 
roe's administration drew near, there were, it must 
be remembered, five candidates in the field for the 
succession — -Crawford, Clay, Calhoun, Adams, and 
Jackson. Calhoun withdrew, was nominated for 
Vice-president, and was triumphantly elected; but 
for President there was no choice. Jackson had 99 

407 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

electoral votes, Adams 84, Crawford 41, Clay 37. 
The choice was thrown into the House of Represent- 
atives, and took place February 9, 1825. Two dis- 
tinguished men were tellers, Daniel Webster and John 
Randolph. They reported that Adams had 13 votes, 
General Jackson 7, Crawford 4; and that Adams was 
therefore elected. The explanation was that Clay's 
forces had been transferred to Adams, and when, after 
his inauguration. Clay was made Secretary of State, 
the cry of " unholy coalition" was overwhelming. It 
was, John Randolph said, " a combination hitherto un- 
heard of, of the Puritan and the Blackleg— of Blifil 
and Black George" — -these being two characters in 
Fielding's Tom Jones. This led to a duel between 
Clay and Randolph, in which neither party fell. But 
the charge remained. Jackson and Calhoun believed 
it during their whole lives, though the publication of 
John Quincy Adams's Diary has made it clear that 
there was no real foundation for it. 

The influence, since called "the machine," in poli- 
tics was systematically brought to bear against 
Adams during all the latter part of his administra- 
tion. Having the reluctance of a high-minded states- 
man to win support by using patronage for it, he un- 
luckily had not that better quality which enables a 
warm-hearted man to secure loyal aid without rais- 
ing a finger. The power that he thus refused to em- 
ploy was simply used against him by his own sub- 
ordinates. We know by the unerring evidence of 
his own diary that he saw clearly how his own recti- 
tude was injuring him, yet never thought of swerv- 
ing from his course. One by one the men depend- 
ent on him went over, beneath his eyes, to the camp 
of his rival; and yet so long as each man was a 

408 



THE GREAT WESTERN MARCH 

good officer he was left untouched. Adams says in 
his Diary (under date of May 13, 1825), when de- 
scribing his own entrance on office: "Of the custom- 
house officers throughout the Union two-thirds were 
probably opposed to my election. They were all now 
in my power, and I had been urged very earnestly 
from various quarters to sweep away my opponents, 
and provide with their places for my friends." This 
was what he absolutely refused to do. In these days 
of civil-service reform we go back with pleasure to his 
example; but the general verdict of the period was 
that this course may have been very heroic, but it 
was not war. 

It must always be remembered, moreover, in our 
effort to understand the excitement of politics two gen- 
erations ago, that the Presidential candidates were 
then nominated by Congressional caucus. The effect 
was to concentrate in one spot the excitement and 
the intrigues that must now be distributed through 
the nation. The result was almost wholly evil. " It 
places the President," John Quincy Adams wrote just 
before his election, "in a state of subserviency to the 
members of the legislature, which . . . leads to a 
thousand corrupt cabals between the members of 
Congress and heads of departments. . . . The only 
possible chance for a head of a department to attain 
the Presidency is by ingratiating himself with the 
members of Congress." The result was that these 
Congressmen practically selected the President. For 
political purposes, Washington was the focus of all 
that political agitation now distributed over various 
cities; it was New York, Cincinnati, Chicago, all in 
one. It was in a centre of politics like this, not in 
the present more metropolitan Washington, that John 
«7 409 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

Quincy Adams stood impassive — the object of malice, 
of jealousy, of envy, of respect, and perhaps some- 
times even of love. 

He was that most unfortunate personage, an ac- 
cidental President — one chosen not by a majority or 
even a plurality of popular or electoral votes, but 
only by the process reluctantly employed in case 
these votes yield no choice. The popular feeling of 
the nation, by a plurality at least, had demanded the 
military favorite, Jackson; and through the four 
years of Adams's respectable but rather colorless ad- 
ministration it still persisted in this demand. The 
grave, undemonstrative President, not rewarding his 
friends, if indeed he had friends, had little chance 
against the popular favorite ; his faults hindered him ; 
his very virtues hindered him; and though he was 
not, like his father, defeated squarely on a clear po- 
litical issue, he was defeated still. With him we 
leave behind the trained statesmen-Presidents of the 
early period, and pass to the untrained, untamed, 
vigorous personality of Andrew Jackson. 



XVIII 
"OLD HICKORY" 

DR. VON HOLST, one of the most philosophic of 
historians, when he passes from the period of John 
Quincy Adams to that of his successor, is reluctantly 
compelled to leave the realm of pure history for that 
of biography, and to entitle a chapter "The Reign of 
Andrew Jackson." This change of treatment could, 
indeed, hardly be helped. Under Adams all was im- 
personal, methodical, a government of laws and not 
of men. With an individuality quite as strong as 
that of Jackson — as the whole nation learned ere his 
life ended — it had yet been the training of his earlier 
career to suppress himself and be simply a perfect 
official. His policy aided the vast progress of the 
nation, but won for him no credit by the process. 
Men saw with wonder the westward march of an ex- 
panding people, but forgot to notice the sedate, pas- 
sionless, orderly administration that held the door 
open and kept the peace for all. In studying the time 
of Adams, we think of the nation; in observing that 
of Jackson, we think of Jackson himself. In him 
we see the first popular favorite c^f a people now well 
out of leading-strings, and particularly bent on going 
alone. By so much as he differed from Adams, by 
so much the nation liked him better. His conquests 
had been those of war — always more dazzling than 

411 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

those of peace; his temperament was of fire — always 
more attractive than one of marble. He was helped 
by what he had done and by what he had not done. 
Even his absence of diplomatic training was almost 
countedfor a virtue, because all this training was then 
necessarily European, and the demand had arisen for 
a purely American product. 

It had been quite essential to the self-respect of 
the new republic, at the outset, that it should have 
at its head men who had as diplomatists coped with 
European statesmen and not been discomfited. This 
was the case with each of the early successors of 
Washington, and in view of Washington's manifest 
superiority this advantage had not been needed. Per- 
haps it was in a different way a sign of self-respect 
that the new republic should at last turn from this 
tradition and take boldly, from the ranks a strong 
and ill-trained leader, to whom all European prece- 
dent — and, indeed, all other precedent — counted for 
nothing. In Jackson, moreover, there first appeared 
upon our national stage the since familiar figure of 
the self-made man. Other Presidents had sprung 
from a modest origin, but nobody had made an es- 
pecial point of it. Nobody had urged Washington for 
office because he had been a surveyor's assistant; no- 
body had voted for Adams merely because stately 
old ladies designated him as "that cobbler's son." 
But when Jackson came into office the people had 
just had almost a surfeit of regular training in their 
Chief Magistrates, There was a certain zest in the 
thought of a change, and the nation had it. 

It must be remembered that Jackson was in many 
ways far above the successive modern imitators who 
have posed in his image. He was narrow, ignorant, 

412 



"OLD HICKORY" 

violent, unreasonable ; he punished his enemies and re- 
warded his friends. But he was, on the other hand 
— and his worst opponents hardly denied it — honest, 
truthful, and sincere. It was not commonly charged 
upon him that he enriched himself at the public ex- 
pense, or that he dehberately invented falsehoods. 
And as he was for a time more bitterly hated than 
any one who ever occupied his high office, we may be 
very sure that these things would have been charged 
on him, had it been possible. In this respect the 
contrast was enormous between Jackson and his imi- 
tators, and it explains his prolonged influence. He 
never was found out or exposed before the world, 
because there was nothing to detect or unveil; his 
merits and demerits were as visible as his long, nar- 
row, firmly set features, or as the old military stock 
that encircled his neck. There he was, always fully 
revealed ; everybody could see him ; the people might 
take him or leave him — and they never left him. 

Moreover, there was, after the eight years of Mon- 
roe and the four years of Adams, an immense popu- 
lar demand for something piquant and even amus- 
ing, and this quality men always found in Jackson. 
There was nothing in the least melodramatic about 
him; he never posed or attitudinized — it would have 
required too much patience; but he was always pi- 
quant. There was formerly a good deal of discussion 
as to who wrote the once famous "Jack Downing" 
letters, but we might almost say that they wrote 
themselves. Nobody was ever less of a humorist 
than Andrew Jackson, and it was therefore the more 
essential that he should be the cause of humor in 
others. It was simply inevitable that during his 
progresses through the country there should be some 

413 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

amusing shadow evoked, some Yankee parody of the 
man, such as came from two or three quarters under 
the name of Jack Downing. The various records of 
Monroe's famous tours are as tame as the speeches 
which these expeditions brought forth, and John 
Quincy Adams never made any popular demonstra- 
tions to chronicle; but wherever Jackson went there 
went the other Jack, the crude first-fruits of what is 
now known through the world as "American hu- 
mor." Jack Downing was Mark Twain and Hosea 
Biglow and Artemus Ward in one. The impetuous 
President enraged many and delighted many, but it 
is something to know that under him a serious peo- 
ple first found that it knew how to laugh. 

The very extreme, the perfectly needless extreme, 
of political foreboding that marked the advent of 
Jackson furnished a background of lurid solemnity 
for all this light comedy. Samuel Breck records in 
his diary that he conversed with Daniel Webster in 
Philadelphia, March 24, 1827, upon the prospects of 
the government. "Sir," said Webster, "if General 
Jackson is elected, the government of our country 
will be overthrown; the judiciary will be destroyed; 
Mr. Justice Johnson will be made Chief-justice in the 
room of Mr. Marshall, who must soon retire, and then 
in half an hour Mr. Justice Washington and Mr. Justice 
Story will resign. A majority will be left with Mr. 
Johnson, and every constitutional decision hitherto 
made will be reversed." As a matter of fact, none 
of these results followed. Mr. Justice Johnson never 
became Chief -justice ; Mr. Marshall retained that of- 
fice till his death in 1835 ; Story and Washington also 
died in office ; the judiciary was not overthrown or the 
government destroyed. But the very ecstasy of these 

414 



"OLD HICKORY" 

fears stimulated the excitement of the public mind. 
No matter how extravagant the supporters of 
Jackson might be, they could hardly go further 
in that direction than did the Websters in the 
other. 

But it was not the fault of the Jackson party if 
anybody went beyond them in -exaggeration. An 
English traveller, William E. Alexander, going in a 
stage-coach from Baltimore to Washington in 1831, 
records the exuberant conversation of six editors, 
with whom he was shut up for hours. "The gentle- 
men of the press," he says, "talked of 'going the 
whole hog' for one another, of being ' up to the hub' 
(nave) for General Jackson, who was 'all brimstone 
but the head, and that was aqua-fortis,' and swore 
if any one abused him he ought to be ' set straddle 
on an iceberg, and shot through with a streak of 
lightning.' " Somewhere between the dignified de- 
spair of Daniel Webster and the admiring slang of 
these gentry, we must look for the actual truth about 
Jackson's administration. The fears of the states- 
man were not wholly groundless, for it is always hard 
to count in advance upon the tendency of high office 
to make men more reasonable. The enthusiasm of 
the journalists had a certain foundation; at any rate, 
it was a part of their profession to like stirring times, 
and they had now the promise of them. After 
twelve years of tolerably monotonous government, 
any party of editors in America, assembled in a stage- 
coach, would have showered epithets of endearment 
on the man who gave such promise in the way of 
lively items. No acute journalist could help seeing 
that a man had a career before him who was called . 
"Old Hickory" by three-quarters of the nation; and 

415 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

who made "Hurrah for Jackson!" a cry so potent 
that it had the force of a popular decree. 

There was, indeed, unbounded room for popular 
enthusiasm in the review of Jackson's early career. 
Born in North Carolina, he had a childhood of poverty 
and ignorance. He was taken prisoner as a mere 
boy during the Revolution, and could never forget 
that he had been wounded by a British officer whose 
boots he had refused to brush. Afterwards, in a 
frontier community, he was successively farmer, 
shopkeeper, law student, lawyer, district attorney, 
judge, and Congressman, being first Representative 
from Tennessee, and then Senator — and all before 
the age of thirty-one. In Congress Albert Gallatin 
describes him as " a tall, lank, uncouth-looking per- 
sonage, with long locks of hair hanging over his brows 
and face, and a queue down his back tied in an eel- 
skin ; his dress singular, his manners and deportment 
those of . a backwoodsman." He remained, how- 
ever, but a year or two in all at Philadelphia — then 
the seat of national government — and afterwards be- 
came a planter in Tennessee, fought duels, subdued 
Tecumseh and the Creek Indians, winning finally the 
great opportunity of his life by being made a major- 
general in the United States army on May 31, 18 14. 
He now had his old captors, the British, with whom 
to deal, and he entered into the work with a relish. 
By way of preliminary he took Pensacola, without 
any definite authority, from the Spaniards, to whom 
it belonged, and from the English whom they har- 
bored; and then turned, without orders, without 
support, and without supplies, to undertake the de- 
fence of New Orleans. 

Important as was this city, and plain as it was that 

416 



"OLD HICKORY" 

the British threatened it, the national authorities 
had done nothing to defend it. The impression pre- 
vailed at Washington that it must already have been 
taken, but that the President would not let it be 
known. The Washington Republican of January 17, 
181 5, said, "That Mr. Madison will find it convenient 
and will finally determine to abandon the State of 
Louisiana we have not a doubt." A New York 
newspaper of January 30th, three weeks after New 
Orleans had been saved, said, "It is the general opin- 
ion here that the city of New Orleans must fall." 
Apparently but one thing had averted its fall — the 
energy and will of Andrew Jackson. On his own 
responsibility he declared martial law, impressed sol- 
diers, seized powder and supplies, built fortifications 
of cotton bales and anything else that came to hand. 
When the news of the battle of New Orleans came to 
the seat of government it was almost too bewildering 
for belief. The British veterans of the Peninsular 
war, whose march wherever they had landed had 
heretofore seemed a holiday parade, were repulsed in 
a manner so astounding that their loss, in killed and 
wounded, was more than two thousand, while that 
of the Americans was but thirteen (January 8, 181 5). 
By a single stroke the national self-respect was re- 
stored; and Henry Clay, at Paris, said, "Now I can 
go to England without mortification." 

All these things must be taken into account in 
estimating what Dr. Von Hoist calls ' ' the reign of 
Andrew Jackson." After this climax of military suc- 
cess he was for a time employed on frontier service, 
again went to Florida to fight Englishmen and Span- 
iards, practically conquering that region in a few 
weeks, but this time with an overwhelming force. 

417 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

Already his impetuosity had proved to have a trouble- 
some side to it ; he had violated neutral territory, had 
hanged two Indians without justification, and had 
put to death, with no authority, two Englishmen, 
Ambrister and Arbuthnot. These irregularities did 
not harm him in the judgment of his admirers; they 
seemed in the line of his character, and helped more 
than they hurt him. In the winter of 1823-24 he 
was again chosen a Senator from Tennessee. Thence- 
forth he was in the field as a candidate for the Presi- 
dency, with two things to aid him — his own immense 
popularity and a skilful friend. This friend was one 
William B. Lewis, a man in whom all the arts of the 
modern wire-puller seemed to be born full-grown. 

There was at that time (1824) no real division in 
parties. The Federalists had been effectually put 
down, and every man who aspired to ofhce claimed 
to be Democratic-Republican. Nominations were 
irregularly made, sometimes by a Congressional cau- 
cus, sometimes by State Legislatures. Tennessee, 
and afterwards Pennsylvania, nominated Jackson. 
When it came to the election, he proved to be by all 
odds the popular candidate. Professor W. G. Sumner, 
counting up the vote of the people, finds 155,800 votes 
for Jackson, 105,300 for Adams, 44,200 for Crawford, 
46,000 for Clay. Even with this strong popular vote 
before it, the House of Representatives, balloting by 
States, elected, as has been seen, John Quincy Adams. 
Seldom in our history has the cup of power come so 
near to the lips of a candidate and been dashed away 
again. Yet nothing is surer in a republic than a 
certain swing of the pendulum, afterwards, in favor 
of any candidate to whom a special injustice has 
been done; and in the case of a popular favorite like 

418 



"OLD HICKORY" 

Jackson this recoil might have been foreseen to be 
irresistible. His election four years later was almost 
a foregone conclusion, but, as if to make it wholly- 
sure, there came up the rumor of a "corrupt bar- 
gain" between the successful candidate and Mr. 
Clay, whose forces had indeed joined with those of 
Mr. Adams to make a majority. For General Jack- 
son there could be nothing more fortunate. The 
mere ghost of a corrupt bargain is worth many thou- 
sand votes to the lucky man whose supporters conjure 
up the ghost. 

When it came to the turn of the Adams party to be 
defeated, in 1828, they attributed this result partly 
to the depravity of the human heart, partly to the 
tricks of Jackson, and partly to the unfortunate tem- 
perament of Adams. The day after a candidate is 
beaten everybody knows why it was, and says it 
was just what any one might have foreseen. Ezekiel 
Webster, writing from New Hampshire, laid the re- 
sult chiefly on the nominee, whom everybody dis- 
liked, and who would persist in leaving his bitter op- 
ponents in office. The people, Webster said, "al- 
ways supported his cause from a cold sense of duty, 
and not from any liking of the man. We soon satisfy 
ourselves," he added, "that we have discharged our 
duty to the cause of any man when we do not enter- 
tain for him one personal kind feeling, nor cannot, 
unless we disembowel ourselves, like a trussed turkey, 
of all that is human within us." There is, indeed, no 
doubt that Adams helped on his own defeat, both 
by his defects and by what would now be considered 
his virtues. The trouble, however, lay further back. 
Ezekiel Webster thought that "if there had been at 
the head of affairs a man of popular character, like 

419 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

Mr. Clay, or any man whom we were not compelled 
by our natures, instinct, and fixed fate to dislike, the 
result would have been different." But we can now 
see that all this would really have made no difference 
at all. Had Adams been personally the most at- 
tractive of men, instead of being a conscientious 
iceberg, the same result would have followed, and 
the people would have felt that Jackson's turn had 
come. 

Accordingly, the next election, that of 1828, was 
easily settled. Jackson had 178 electoral votes, 
Adams but 83 — more than two to one. Adams had 
not an electoral vote south of the Potomac or west 
of the Alleghanies, though Daniel Webster, writing 
to Jeremiah Mason, had predicted that he would 
carry six western and southern States. In Georgia 
no Adams ticket was even nominated, he being there 
unpopular for one of his best acts-^the protection of 
the Cherokees. On the other hand, but one Jackson 
elector was chosen from New England, and he by 
less than two hundred majority. This was in the 
Maine district that included Bowdoin College, and I 
have heard from an old friend of mine the tale of 
how he, being then a student at Bowdoin, tolled the 
college bell at midnight to express the shame of the 
students, although the elector thus chosen (Judge 
Preble) was the own uncle of this volunteer sexton. 
It would have required many college bells to an- 
nounce the general wrath of New England, which was 
not diminished by the fact that Calhoun, another 
Southerner, was chosen Vice-president over Richard 
Rush. To be sure, Calhoun had filled the same 
office under John Quincy Adams, but then there was 
a northern man for President. For the first time 

420 



"OLD HICKORY'* 

the lines seemed distinctly drawn for the coming sec- 
tional antagonism. . 

But even this important fact was really quite sub- 
ordinate, for the time being, in men's minds. The 
opposition to Jackson, like his popularity, was per- 
sonal. It was not a mere party matter. The older 
statesmen distrusted him, without much regard to 
their political opinions. When Monroe asked Jeffer- 
son, in 1818, if it would not be well to give Jackson 
the embassy to Russia, Jefferson utterly disapproved 
it. "He would breed you a quarrel," he said, "be- 
fore he had been there a month." At a later period 
Jefferson said to Daniel \Yebster: " I feel much alarm- 
ed at the prospect of seeing General Jackson Presi- 
dent. He is one of the most unfit men I know of 
for such 'a place. He has had very little respect for 
laws or constitutions, and is, in fact, an able military 
chief. His passions are terrible. When I was Presi- 
dent of the Senate he was a Senator, and he could 
never speak on account of the rashness of his feelings. 
I have seen him attempt it repeatedly, and as often 
choke with rage. His passions are no doubt cooler 
now; he has been much tried since I knew him; but 
he is a dangerous man." And dangerous indeed the 
public office-holders soon found him. As has been 
already seen, a large part of those who held office 
under Adams were already partisans of Jackson ; but 
the rest soon discovered that a changed policy had 
come in. Between March 4, 1829, and March 22, 
1830, 491 postmasters and 230 other officers were re- 
moved, making, as it was thought, with their sub- 
ordinates, at least two thousand political changes. 
Mr. Sumner well points out that it is unfair to charge 
this, as we often do, solely upon Jackson. Crawford, 

421 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

as has already been seen, prepared the way for the 
practice; it had been perfected in the local politics 
of New York and Pennsylvania. It was simply a 
disease which the nation must undergo — must ulti- 
mately get rid of, indeed, unless destroyed by it; 
but it will always be identified, by coincidence of 
time at least, with the Presidency of Andrew Jackson. 
If not the father of the evil, he will always stand in 
history as its godfather. 

It is a curious fact in political history that a public 
man is almost always, to a certain extent, truthfully 
criticised by the party opposed to him. His oppo- 
nents may exaggerate, they may distort, but they are 
rarely altogether wrong ; their criticism generally goes 
to the right point, and finds out the weak spot. Jack- 
son was as vehemently attacked as Jefferson, and by 
the same class of people, but the points of the criti- 
cism were wholly different. Those who had habit- 
ually denounced Jefferson for being timid in action 
were equally hard on Jackson for brimming over with 
superfluous courage and being ready to slap every 
one in the face. The discrimination of charges was 
just. A merely vague and blundering assailant would 
have been just as likely to call Jackson a coward and 
Jefferson a fire-eater, which would have been absurd. 
The summing up of the Federalist William Sullivan, 
written in 1834, was not so very far from the sober 
judgment of posterity. "Andrew Jackson. ... is a 
sort of liisus reipubliccB, held by no rules or laws, and 
who honestly believes his sycophants that he was 
born to command. With a head and heart not bet- 
ter than Thomas Jefferson had, but freed from the 
inconvenience of that gentleman's constitutional 
timidity, and familiar with the sword, he has dis- 

422 



"OLD HICKORY" 

closed the real purpose of the American people in 
fighting the battles of the Revolution and establish- 
ing a national republic — viz., that the will of Andrew 
Jackson shall be the law and only law of the re- 
public." 

Really General Jackson himself would not have 
greatly objected to this estimate could he have had 
patience to read it. He was singularly free from 
hypocrisy or concealment, was not much of a talker, 
and took very little trouble to invent fine names for 
what he did. But on another point where he was 
as sharply criticised he was very vulnerable ; like most 
ignorant and self-willed men, he was easily managed 
by those who understood him. Here again was a good 
illustration of the discernment of even vehement ene- 
mies. Nobody charged Jefferson with being over- 
influenced by a set of inferior men, though all the op- 
position charged Jackson with it. The reason was 
that in this last case it was true ; and during the greater 
part of Jackson's two administrations there was con- 
stant talk of what Webster called the "cabinet im- 
proper," as distinct from the cabinet proper — what 
was known in popular phrase as the "kitchen cabi- 
net." Here again came in the felicity of Jack Down- 
ing's portraiture. The familiarity with which this 
imaginary ally pulled off the President's boots or 
wore his old clothes hardly surpassed the undignified 
attitudes popularly attributed to Swartwout and Hill 
and Van Buren. 

On the day of his inauguration the President was 
received in Washington with an ardor that might 
have turned a more modest head. On the day when 
the new administration began (March 4, 1829), Daniel 
Webster wrote to his sister-in-law, with whom he had 

423 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

left his children that winter: "To-day we have had 
the inauguration. A monstrous crowd of people is 
in the city. I never saw anything like it before. 
Persons have come five hundred miles to see Gen- 
eral Jackson, and they really seem to think that the 
country is rescued from some frightful danger." It is 
difficult now to see what this peril was supposed to be ; 
but we know that the charges of monarchical ten- 
dency made against John Adams had been renewed 
against his son — a renewal that seems needless in 
case of a man so scrupulously republican that he 
would not use a seal ring, and so unambitious that 
he always sighed after the quieter walks of literature. 
Equally unjust was the charge of extravagance against 
the younger Adams, who kept the White House in 
better order than his predecessor on less than half the 
appropriation — an economy wholly counterbalanced 
in some minds by the fact that he had put in a billiard- 
table. But however all this may have been, the fact 
is certain that no President had yet entered the 
White House amid such choruses of delight as were 
called forth by Jackson ; nor did it happen again until 
his pupil, Van Buren, yielded, amid equal popular 
enthusiasm, to another military hero, Plarrison. 

For the social life of Washington the President had 
one advantage which was altogether unexpected, and 
seemed difficult of explanation by anything in his 
earlier career. He had at his command the most 
courteous and agreeable manners. Even before the 
election of Adams, Daniel Webster had written to 
his brother: "General Jackson's manners are better 
than those of any of the candidates. He is grave, 
mild, and reserved. My wife is for him decidedly." 
And long after, when the President was to pass in re- 

424 



"OLD HICKORY" 

view before those who were perhaps his most im- 
placable opponents, the ladies of Boston, we have 
the testimony of the late Josiah Quincy, in his Fig- 
ures from the Past, that the personal bearing of this 
obnoxious official was most unwillingly approved. 
Quincy was detailed by Govenior Lincoln, on whose 
military staff he was, to attend President Jackson 
everywhere when visiting Boston in 1833; and this 
narrator testifies that, with every prejudice against 
Jackson, he found him essentially "a knightly per- 
sonage — prejudiced, narrow, mistaken on many 
points, it might be, but vigorously a gentleman in his 
high sense of honor and in the natural straightfor- 
ward courtesies which are easily distinguished from 
the veneer of policy." Sitting erect on his horse, a 
thin, stiff type of military strength, he carried with 
him in the streets a bearing of such dignity that staid 
old Bostonians who had refused even to look upon 
him from their windows would finally be coaxed into 
taking one peep, and would then hurriedly bring for- 
ward their little daughters to wave their handker- 
chiefs. He wrought, Quincy declares, "a mysteri- 
ous charm upon old and young"; showed, although 
in feeble health, a great consideration for others ; and 
was in private a really agreeable companion. It ap- 
pears from these reminiscences that the President 
was not merely the cause of wit in others, but now 
and then appreciated it himself, and that he used to 
listen with deHght to the reading of the "Jack Down- 
ing" letters, laughing heartily sometimes, and de- 
claring, "The Vice-president must have written that. 
Depend upon it. Jack Downing is only Van Buren in 
masquerade." It is a curious fact that the satirist 
is already the better remembered of the two, although 
28 425 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

Van Buren was in his day so powerful as to preside 
over the official patronage of the nation, and to be 
called the "Little Magician." 

But whatever personal attractions of manner Presi- 
dent Jackson may have had, he threw away his social 
leadership at Washington by a single act of what 
may have been misapplied chivalry. This act was 
what Mr. Morse has tersely called "the importation 
of Mrs. Eaton's visiting list into the politics and gov- 
ernment of the country." It was the nearest ap- 
proach yet made under our masculine political in- 
stitutions to those eminent scandals which constitute 
the minor material of court historians in Europe. 
The heroine of the comedy, considered merely as 
Peggy O'Neil, daughter of a Washington innkeeper 
— or as Mrs. Timberlake, the wife of a naval purser 
who had committed suicide because of strong drink — 
might have seemed more like a personage out of one 
of Fielding's novels than as a feature in the history 
of an administration ; but when fate at last made her 
Mrs. Secretary Eaton she became one who could dis- 
turb cabinets and annihilate friendships. It was not 
merely out of regard for her personal wrongs that all 
this took place, but there was a long history behind 
it. There had been a little irregularity about Presi- 
dent Jackson's own marriage. He had espoused his 
wife after a supposed divorce from a previous hus- 
band; and when the divorce really took place the 
ceremony had to be repeated. Moreover, as the di- 
vorce itself had originally been based on some scandal 
about Jackson, he was left in a state of violent sensi- 
tiveness on the whole matrimonial question. Mrs. 
Eaton had nothing in the world to do with all this, 
but she got the benefit of it. The mere fact that she 

426 



"OLD HICKORY" 

to whom the President had good-naturedly nodded 
as Peggy O'Neil had been censured by his own officials, 
after she had become the wife of one of them, was 
enough to enrage him. 

For once he overestimated his powers. He had 
conquered Indian tribes and checked the army of 
Great Britain, but the ladies of Washington society 
were too much for him. Every member of his cabi- 
net expressed the utmost approval of his position, 
but they said with one accord that those matters 
must be left to their wives. Mrs. Donelson, his own 
niece — that is, the wife of his nephew, and the lady 
who received company for him at the White House — 
would not receive Mrs. Eaton, and was sent back to 
Tennessee. Mrs. Calhoun, the wife of the Vice-presi- 
dent, took the same attitude, and ruined thereby her 
husband's political prospects, Calhoun being ut- 
terly superseded in the President's good graces by 
Van Buren, who, being a widower, could pay at- 
tention to the offending fair one without let or hin- 
derance. Through his influence Baron Krudener, the 
Russian Minister, and Vaughan, the British Min- 
ister, both bachelors, gave entertainments at which 
"Bellona," as the newspapers afterwards called the 
lady, from her influence in creating strife, was pres- 
ent. It did no good; every dance in which she stood 
up to take part was, in the words of a Washington 
letter-writer, ' ' instantly dissolved into its original 
elements," and though she was placed at the head of 
the supper-table, ever}^ lady present ignored her very 
existence. Thus the amenities of Van Buren were 
as powerless as the anger of Jackson; but the astute 
Secretary won the President's heart, and with it that 
of his whole immediate circle — cabinet proper and 

427 



HISTORY OF THE U N I T F. D STATES 

cabinet improper. It was one of the things that turn-" 
ed the scale between Calhoun and Van Buren, putting 
the New York " magician" in line for the Presidential 
succession; and in this way Peggy O'Neil had an ap- 
preciable influence on the political history of the 
nation. It was fortunate that she did not also lead 
to foreign embroilments, for the wife of the Dutch 
Minister once refused to sit next to her at a public 
entertainment, upon which the President threatened 
to demand the Minister's recall. All this time Jack- 
son himself remained utterly free from scandal, nor 
did his enemies commonly charge him with anything 
beyond ill-timed quixotism. But it shows how femi- 
nine influence creeps inside of all political barriers, 
and recalls Charles Churchill's couplet: 

"Women, who've oft as sovereigns graced the land. 
But never governed well at second-hand." 

The two acts with which the administration of 
President Jackson will be longest identified are his 
deahngs with South Carohna in respect to nulHfica- 
tion and his long warfare with the United States 
Bank. The first brought the New England States 
back to him, and the second took them away again. 
He perhaps won rather more applause than he merited 
by the one act, and more condemnation than was 
just for the other. Let us first consider the matter 
of nullification. When various southern States — 
Georgia, at first, not South Carohna, taking the lead 
—had quarrelled with the tariff of 1828, and openly 
threatened to set it aside, they evidently hoped for 
the co-operation of the President ; or at least for that 
silent acquiescence he had shown when Georgia had 
been almost equally turbulent on the Indian question, 

428 



"OLD HICKORY" 

and he would not interfere, as his predecessor had 
done, to protect the treaty rights of the Indian tribes. 
The whole South was therefore startled when he gave, 
at a banquet on Jefferson's birthday (April 13, 1830), 
a toast that now seems commonplace — "The Federal 
Union; it must be preserved." But this was not all; 
when the time came he took vigorous, if not alto- 
gether consistent, steps to preserve it. 

When, in November, 1832, South Carolina for the 
first time officially voted that certain tariff acts were 
null and void in that State, the gauntlet of defiance 
was fairly thrown down, and Jackson picked it up. 
He sent General Scott to take command at Charles- 
ton, with troops near by, and two gun-boats at hand ; 
he issued a dignified proclamation, written by Living- 
ston (December 10, 1832), which pronounced the act 
of South Carolina contradictory to the Constitution, 
unauthorized by it, and destructive of its aims. So 
far, so good; but unfortunately the President had, 
the week before (December 4, 1832), sent a tariff mes- 
sage to Congress, of which John Quincy Adams wrote, 
"It goes far to dissolve the Union into its original ele- 
ments, and is in substance a complete surrender into 
the hands of the nullifiers of South Carolina." Then 
came Mr. Clay's compromise tariff of 1833, following 
in part the line indicated by this message, and achiev- 
ing, as Mr. Calhoun said, a victory for nullification — 
leaving the matter a drawn game, at any rate. The 
action of Jackson, being thus accompanied, settled 
nothing ; it was like valiantly ordering a burglar out 
of your hoiise with a pistol, and adding the suggestion 
that he will find a portion of the family silver on the 
hall table, ready packed for his use, as he goes out. 

Nevertheless, the burglar was gone for the moment, 

429 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

and the President had the credit of it. He had al- 
ready been re-elected by an overwhelming majority 
in November, 1832, receiving 219 electoral votes, and 
Clay 49 ; while Floyd had the 1 1 votes of South Caro- 
lina (which still chose electors by its legislature — a 
practice now abandoned), and Wirt the 7 of Vermont. 
Van Buren was chosen Vice-president, being nomi- 
nated in place of Calhoun by the Democratic National 
Convention, which now for the first time came into 
operation. The President was thus at his high- 
water mark of popularity — always a dangerous time 
for a public man. His vehement nature accepted his 
re-election as a proof that he was right in everything, 
and he grew more self-confident than ever. More 
imperiously than ever he ordered about friends and 
opponents; and his friends repaid it by guiding his 
affairs, unconsciously to himself. Meantime he was 
encountering another enemy of greater power, be- 
cause more silent, than southern nullification, and he 
was drifting on to his final contest with the United 
States Bank. 

Sydney Smith says that every Englishman feels 
himself able, without instruction, to drive a pony- 
chaise, conduct a small farm, and edit a newspaper. 
The average American assumes, in addition to all 
this, that he is competent to manage a bank. Presi- 
dent Jackson claimed for himself in this respect no 
more than his fellows; the difference was in strength 
of will and in possession of power. A man so igno- 
rant that a member of his own family, according to 
Mr. Trist, used to say that the general did not believe 
the world was round, might easily convince himself 
that he knew all about banking. As he had, besides 
all this, very keen observation and great intuitive 

430 



"OLD HICKORY" 

judgment of character, he was probably right in his 
point of attack. There is little doubt that the bank 
of the United States, under Nicholas Biddle, con- 
centrated in itself an enormous power; and it spent 
in four years, by confession of its directors, $58,000 
in what they called "self-defence" against "poli- 
ticians." When, on July 10, 1832, General Jackson, 
in a long message, vetoed the bill renewing the charter 
of the bank, he performed an act of courage, taking 
counsel with his instincts. But when in the year 
following he performed the act known as the "re- 
moval of the deposits," or, in other words, caused 
the public money to be no longer deposited in the 
National Bank and its twenty-five branches, but in a 
variety of State banks instead, then he took counsel 
of his ignorance. 

The act originally creating the bank had, indeed, 
given the Secretary of the Treasury authority to re- 
move these deposits at any time, he afterwards giv- 
ing to Congress his reasons. The President had in 
vain urged Congress to order the change ; that body 
declined. He had in vain urged the Secretary of the 
Treasury to remove them, and on his refusing, had 
displaced the official himself. The President at last 
found a Secretary of the Treasury (Roger B. Taney) 
to order the removal, or rather cessation, of deposits. 
The consequence, immediate or remote, was an im- 
mense galvanizing into existence of State banks, and 
ultimately a vast increase of paper-money. The 
Sub-Treasury system had not then been thought of; 
there was no proper place of deposit for the public 
funds ; their possession was a direct stimulus to specu- 
lation; and the President's cure was worse than the 
disease. All the vast inflation of 1835 and 1836 and 

431 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

the business collapse of 1837 were due to the fact 
not merely that Andrew Jackson brought all his vio- 
lent and persistent will to bear against the United 
States Bank, but that when he got the power into 
his own hands he did not know what to do with it. 
Not one of his biographers — hardly even a bigoted 
admirer, so far as I know — now claimxS that his course 
in this respect was anything but a mistake. "No 
monster bank," says Professor W. G. Sumner, "un- 
der the most malicious management, could have pro- 
duced as much havoc, either political or financial, as 
this system produced while it lasted." If the bank 
was, as is now generally admitted, a dangerous in- 
stitution, Jackson was in the right to resist it; he was 
right even in disregarding the enormous flood of pe- 
titions that poured in to its support. But to oppose 
a dangerous bank does not necessarily make one an 
expert in banking. The utmost that can be said in 
favor of his action is that the calamitous results show- 
ed the great power of the institution he overthrew, 
and that if he had let it alone the final result might 
have been as bad. 

Two new States were added to the Union in Presi- 
dent Jackson's time — Arkansas (1836) and Michigan 
(1837). The population of the United States in 1830 
had risen to nearly thirteen millions (12,866,020). 
There was no foreign war during his administration, 
although one with France was barely averted, and no 
domestic contest except the second Seminole war 
against the Florida Indians — a contest in which these 
combatants held their ground so well, under the half- 
breed chief Osceola, that he himself was only captured 
by the violation of a flag of truce. The war being 
equally carried on against fugitive slaves called 

432 



"OLD HICKORY" 

Maroons, who had intermarried with the Indians, did 
something to prepare the pubHc mind for a new 
agitation which was to remould American political 
parties and to modify the Constitution of the nation. 
It must be remembered that the very air began to 
be filled in Jackson's time with rumors of insurrections 
and uprisings in different parts of the world. The 
French revolution of the Three Days had roused all 
the American people to sympathy, and called forth 
especial enthusiasm in such cities as Baltimore, 
Richmond, and Charleston. The Polish revolution 
had excited universal interest, and John Randolph 
had said, " The Greeks are at your doors." At home 
the antislavery contest, destined to be for more than 
thirty years the great issue of American politics, was 
opening. In Garrison, Jackson for once met a will 
firmer than his own, because more steadfast and 
moved by a loftier purpose. Abolition was to draw 
new lines, establish new standards, and create new 
reputations; and it is to be remembered that the 
Democratic President did not abhor it more, on the 
one side, than did his fiercest Federalist critics on the 
other. One of the ablest of them, William Sullivan, 
at the close of his Familiar Letters on Public Char- 
acters, after exhausting language to depict the out- 
rages committed by President Jackson, points out as 
equally objectionable the rising antislavery move- 
ment, and predicts that, if it has its full course, 
"even an Andrew Jackson may be a blessing." But 
of the wholly new series of events which were to date 
from this agitation neither Sullivan nor Jackson had 
so much as a glimpse. The story of that great move- 
ment must now be told. 

433 



XIX 

ABOLITIOxN OF SLAVERY 

IT has more than once been observed that slavery, 
notwithstanding the flood of writing about it, still 
remains not only the most interesting but also the 
most perplexing institution in American history. On 
no subject, save perhaps the causes of the Revolution, 
have we been offered more generalization and less 
fact. The trouble has usually come either from ex- 
clusive attention to some one phase of the subject — ■ 
its territorial aspect, for example — or else from the 
assumption that slavery itself was as an institution 
always and everywhere the same. It may well be 
for most students the beginning of wisdom to re- 
member that slavery, much as we may rejoice at the 
abolition of it, was, nevertheless, like all social insti- 
tutions, a growth ; that it had many forms and turned 
to mankind many sides; and that it was a distinct 
and formative element in American life for more than 
two hundred years before it came to an end. And 
through all the many variations — social, economic, 
political, legal, international — on the theme there 
sounds the note of conscience, not always clear or 
strong, but growing mightily in volume and domi- 
nance towards the end, until at last the great trans- 
formation occurred, and those who were before reck- 
oned as property were at last reckoned as men. 

434 



ABOLITION OF SLAVERY 

The introduction of African negroes into Virginia, 
in 1 619, was probably somewhat accidental, and it 
was some years before slavery became of much im- 
portance in that colony. Carolina, established near- 
ly sixty years after Virginia, had slavery from the 
start, an influential element in its population being 
the disaffected English planters from Barbadoes, who 
brought their slaves with them. The northern and 
middle colonies, too, all had negro slaves, though 
in New England the institution was never of much 
importance. Some of these colonies were, moreover, 
trying the unprofitable experiment of Indian slavery 
as well. In Virginia, however, where the slaves were 
on the whole best treated, there was throughout the 
whole colonial period strong opposition to the African 
slave-trade. Down to 1776 more than thirty acts of 
the Virginia Assembly, imposing restrictions upon the 
trade, were set aside by the King in council. Dur- 
ing the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the 
African trade was mainly in the hands of English 
merchants and capitalists, who for a long period held 
it as a monopoly; and the course of the English gov- 
ernment, controlled as it was largely by men favor- 
able to this lucrative industry, operated to force 
African negroes upon the American colonies. One 
must not be misled, here, however. What V^irginia 
feared, apparently, was not the mere institution of 
slavery per se, but rather an oversupply of slaves 
with the consequent cheapening of their price and 
increased danger of insurrection. There was also 
a just fear of economic injury to the colony from the 
discouragement of free labor and of a varied indus- 
trial life. Certain it was that free labor, itself always 
honorable, would not long remain by the side of 

435 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

slave labor. Whether or not slave labor is, in the 
true sense, "cheap" — labor, that is, whose cost is 
small in proportion to the value of what it produces 
— is a question that has been much discussed. It is 
probable that for a time, while America was in every 
way a new country, the net profit of slave labor was 
as great as that of free labor would have been; but 
there was a future as well as a present to consider. 
Slavery, like many other social institutions, has 
always been somewhat a matter of climate. In mod- 
ern times, at least, it has never flourished outside of 
tropical or semitropical regions. In America it was 
early seen that the central and northern portions of 
the Atlantic coast, not being fit for such staple prod- 
ucts as rice or tobacco, did not present the condi- 
tions necessary for the development of negro slavery ; 
and although slaves continued to be employed in all 
the northern colonies for many years, they were 
mainly house servants, and their numbers steadily 
declined. In the South, on the other hand, slavery 
grew with the growth of a staple agriculture, until 
by the beginning of the eighteenth century free white 
labor, save for a few skilled employments, had been 
either driven out altogether or put socially under the 
ban. The contrast between the sections is shown 
in some figures returned to the English Board of 
Trade in 171 5. New England, with a total popula- 
tion of 161,650, had but 4150 slaves. In the middle 
group of colonies the proportion was higher, 8000 of 
the total of 99,300 being slaves. In the four southern 
colonies of Maryland, Virginia, and the Carolinas, on 
the other hand, the total population of 173,150 in- 
cluded 46,700 slaves, or a little less than four times 
as many as in the other eight colonies together. In 

436 



ABOLITION OF SLAVERY 

South Carolina the negroes outnumbered the whites 
by more than one-half. 

It is not easy to speak with positiveness regarding 
the treatment of the slaves by their masters in either 
the colonial or the constitutional period. If one 
were to judge solely from the statute book, punish- 
ments must in many cases have been ferocious; but, 
happily for the good name of America, the severer 
penalties of the slave codes seem to have been rarely 
imposed. We do not read in the records many ac- 
counts of serious offences committed by negroes, nor 
in general of any greater lawlessness in the slave 
colonies or States than elsewhere. The harsh or 
brutal owner or overseer was undoubtedly to be 
found, as one finds the harsh or brutal employer or 
overseer among free laborers to-day, but the better 
opinion of society frowned upon him in the one case 
as in the other. As a rule, the slaves seem to have 
been well fed, well cared for, well treated, and not 
overworked. If they were unhappy, they were at 
least not keenly conscious of it. On one point, how- 
ever, there was tolerable unanimity of opinion, and 
that was that the negro was of inferior race, incap- 
able of civilization beyond a rudimentary stage, and 
hence the foreordained hewer of wood and drawer 
of water for the white, who alone was made in the 
image of God. The doctrine of "divine right" is 
most commonly associated in history with the oc- 
cupants of thrones; in the United States it was the 
tacit assumption of the whole white race. 

By the beginning of the government under the 
Constitution, in 1789, the United States was clearly 
divided into two sections, in one of which slavery 
flourished, while in the other it had either disap- 

437 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

peared or else was in process of disappearance. 
Slavery obviously was of no consequence north of 
Delaware and Maryland. Vermont, Massachusetts, 
Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and 
Connecticut had already, by constitution or statute, 
declared against it, and they were shortly to be fol- 
lowed by New York and New Jersey. It was in the 
constitutional convention of 1787, however, that the 
sectional divergence first became unmistakably visi- 
ble — that divergence which, two generations later, 
was to force the United States into civil war. The 
issue was certainly a perplexing one. If, in the ap- 
portionment of members of the national House of 
Representatives, only whites were to be counted, the 
North would overbalance the South. If slaves were 
to be counted, every northern freeman would find 
himself offset by a negro who could not vote, and 
who had in law few rights that his owner was bound 
to respect. How the controversy was settled has 
already been told. By one compromise the South 
was allowed to count three-fifths of its slaves in 
choosing its representatives, while by another its 
slave-trade was shielded from national interference 
until 1808, save for the empty privilege of taxing 
imported slaves at the rate not exceeding ten dollars 
a head — a privilege which Congress never exercised. 
Slavery was thus, in the language of later debates, 
"imbedded in the Constitution," and given thereby 
a strong legal claim to consideration. 

But was it a national or a State institution ? Had 
Congress any power over it? The answer came in 
1790, when the House of Representatives, replying 
to memorials submitted to it by the Pennsylvania 
Society for the Abolition of Slavery — of which the 

438 




SLAXKKV IN IHK 




D STATES, 1775-1865 



ABOLITION OF SLAVERY 

aged Franklin was president — and the New York 
yearly meeting of the Society of Friends, decided the 
question. The House declared that while Congress 
could provide by law for the humane treatment of 
slaves on the voyage from i\frica, and could forbid 
American citizens from furnishing foreigners with 
slaves, it had no power under the Constitution to in- 
terfere with slavery in any State or with the treat- 
ment of the slaves themselves. Slavery, in other 
words, was a "domestic institution." The decision 
was good law, and for seventy years was the ac- 
cepted rule of national faith and conduct ; but would 
it stand the strain if once the slavery question came 
to be generally regarded, not alone as a matter of 
law, but also, and increasingly, as a matter of con- 
science ? 

The turning-point in the history of slavery came 
in 1793, when the invention of the cotton-gin by Eli 
Whitney for the first time made slave labor peculiar- 
ly profitable. Prior to this time, a single able-bodied 
slave could in a day clear of seed perhaps a single 
poiind of the cotton fibre. By use of the gin the 
same slave could in the same time clean several hun- 
dred pounds. The economic effect of this simple in- 
vention, taken in connection with the development 
in England of improved machinery for making cotton 
cloth, was profound and far - reaching. Hitherto 
woollen had been the common fabric for clothing of 
all sorts, as well as for many other manufactured 
articles of which cloth formed a part. Now, how- 
ever, with a great obstacle to extensive production sur- 
mounted, <^otton entered the market at a price which 
enabled it to compete with wool; and the demand 
grew with the supply. Among all American staples, 

439 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

cotton was king. And from the day of its enthrone- 
ment there came a change of attitude among all 
classes towards slavery. Gradual emancipation, the 
dream of many a southern planter and the earnest 
hope of men like Washington and Jefferson, faded 
into a vague hope. The demand for a varied indus- 
trial life was silenced by the swelling profitableness 
of cotton-growing. More than anything else, cotton 
dulled the ears and in the end seared the consciences 
of many southern slave-owners to the economic and 
moral evils of their "peculiar institution." Slavery 
now paid well, and therefore it was encouraged. 
There came a change, too, in the attitude towards 
the slave. Where once it was felt to be worth while 
for the master to use his slave well, and thus secure 
his services as long as possible, it began to be thought 
more profitable to use him up with hard labor in a 
brief time and replace him by a fresh importation. 
Critics have vied with one another in telHng us that 
Mrs. Stowe's epoch-making story of Uncle Tom gives 
no true picture of the average life of a slave, though 
it detracts little from the merits of the book to ad- 
mit, and admit gladly, the charge; but there can be 
little question that the course of the nineteenth cen- 
tury saw increasing possibility of such a life as his. 
The slave-trade, once looked upon with aversion, 
was now tolerated and connived at; its prohibition 
by act of Congress after January i, 1808, was worth 
little more than the paper on which the statute was 
printed, and cargoes of African negroes, easily evad- 
ing the scandalously slight efforts to intercept them, 
were regularly landed on the coasts of the. southern 
States until the Civil War. 

During the struggle with England and France 

440 



ABOLITION OF SLAVERY 

which ended with the war of 1812, the slavery issue 
was, for the most part, at rest, while the first years 
of peace were taken up with commercial and finan- 
cial reorganization and with negotiations with Spain 
for the acquisition of the Floridas. Suddenly there 
bufst upon the country the controversy whose out- 
come was the Missouri Compromise. Maine and 
Missouri had applied for admission as States, and to 
neither was there particular objection on the score 
of fitness. There could be no question but that Maine 
would be free. Were it received into the Union alone, 
however, its Senators would give the free States a 
majority of two in the upper house of Congress. 
As the number of members from the free States in 
the House of Representatives had from the beginning 
exceeded the number of those from the slave States 
— the figures in 181 6 being 104 and 79 from the free 
and slave States respectively — a preponderance of 
votes in the Senate also would put the control of 
legislation in the hands of those who, if not yet open- 
ly hostile to slavery, were at least Httle interested in 
maintaining it. The balance could be maintained 
only by admitting Missouri with slavery. How the 
struggle ended has been more particularly told in a 
previous chapter. Missouri came into the Union a 
slave State, but with the proviso that north of the 
parallel 36° 30', within the limits of the Louisiana 
purchase, no more slave States should be erected, 
and with the further fundamental condition that the 
constitution of the State, which among other things 
forbade free negroes to enter the State, should never 
be so interpreted as to prejudice the rights of citizens 
of the United States. The significance of the Mis- 
souri Compromise lay in the fact that it drew a geo- 

2Q 441 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

graphical line south of which slavery was to be per- 
mitted without Congressional interference. Not un- 
til later did the South realize that it had got the small 
end of the bargain, and that the territorial aspect of 
the slavery question had again been only postponed. 
Then fell the dull calm that ushered in the storm. 
Men affected to believe that a profound sectional 
issue had been forever settled by the simple process 
of drawing a line on the map, and hastened to dis- 
miss the unwelcome subject from their minds. Cot- 
ton culture, now the greatest of all southern indus- 
tries, grew apace, and with it the slavery which was 
thought to be its life. The population of Virginia, 
North and South Carolina, and Georgia, long con- 
fined within the borders of those States, had already 
passed the mountains and spread itself over the east- 
ern portion of the rich "black belt" of Alabama and 
Mississippi, shortly to become the great cotton-pro- 
ducing region of the continent. Thither flowed, for 
the furnishing of this patriarchal society — a patri- 
archal society in the midst of an industrial com- 
munity — the corn, bacon, and mules of the West; 
for the lower South raised only cotton. The great 
planter, with his numerous slaves, his large business 
operations, his seemingly princely wealth, his gen- 
erous hospitality, and his chivalrous bearing, became 
to Europeans the highest type of American gentle- 
man, while the West, which found him its best cus- 
tomer, and the East, which welcomed his sons to its 
colleges, found no ground for quarrel with him. In 
the North, meantime, general moral concern about 
slavery waned. Contributions from the South for 
the support of missions muffled the voice of the 
Churches, and the Christian religion became, for the 

442 



ABOLITION OF SLAVERY 

slave, only the pleasing solace of servitude, and for 
the slave-owner its theological justification. Whether 
the slaves were treated well or ill now mattered little, 
for conscience was dead. The American Colonization 
Society, founded in 1816, continued to nourish the 
hope of the transplantation of the blacks to Africa, 
while the idea of ultimate emancipation — usually, 
however, in some distant time — received the good- 
natured assent of many even in the South; but few 
seriously thought of change. The general attitude 
of the country was, on the part of the North, ac- 
quiescence in a system which, remote from imme- 
diate observation, was apparently satisfactory to those 
who lived under it ; and, on the part of the South, an 
increased disposition to regard as necessary a labor 
system from which the slave States were obviously 
getting rich. 

So far as popular interest in the negro, save as a 
wealth-producing factor of indispensable usefulness, 
was concerned, no less favorable time for the inau- 
guration of an abolition movement could well have 
been chosen. The public mind was, indeed, much 
preoccupied. The election of Jackson had brought 
into prominence in national politics the aggressive 
young democracy of the West, and threatened the 
overthrow of Eastern influence in national councils. 
The Bank of the United States, which Jackson had 
already twice attacked in his annual messages of 1829 
and 1830, was girding itself for the fierce and relent- 
less war with the President in which it was to meet 
its death. No struggle so momentous in its principles, 
or so far-reaching in its probable consequences for 
the financial welfare of the country, had as yet been 
even hinted at in the United States. In May, 1830, 

443 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

vetoes of bills authorizing subscriptions by the United 
States of stock in two principal turnpike companies 
had given notice that Jackson was not to be de- 
pended upon to favor internal improvements at na- 
tional expense; and the States, encouraged by the 
example of New York, which had seen the completion 
of the Erie Canal in 1825, were left to develop trans- 
portation routes for themselves. In South Carolina 
the "tariff of abominations" of 1828, raising protec- 
tive duties to a hitherto unheard-of point, had roused 
the hostile State-rights feeling which was shortly to 
take form in the ordinance of nullification. Here, 
surely, was matter enough to occupy the thought of 
a people already engrossed with the development of 
a country whose material expansion was progressing 
by leaps and bounds ; here, clearly, was powerful ar- 
gument against any disturbance of an economic and 
social situation on which the prosperity of one-half 
of the Union apparently depended, and whose con- 
nection with the commercial interests of the other 
half was intimate and even vital. There was talk of 
abolition, of course, as there had always been, but 
it was not the kind of talk that suggested easy trans- 
lation into terms of action. 

It is by neither accident nor injustice that the 
abolition movement in the United States is asso- 
ciated inseparably with the name of William Lloyd 
Garrison; for while there were earnest abolitionists 
before him, and not all who worked with him agreed 
fully with him, he nevertheless stands pre-eminent 
among the men and women who boldly denounced 
slavery as a moral wrong and a national disgrace, 
and who pressed on the agitation which, in little 
more than a generation, was to topple the institution 

444 



ABOLITION OF SLAVERY 

to its fall. Garrison was born in Newburyport, 
Massachusetts, in 1805. Learning the trade of print- 
er, and practising both printing and newspaper edit- 
ing in Boston and Bennington, Vermont, he went to 
Baltimore in 1829 to take charge of the Genius of 
Universal Emancipation, a paper published by Ben- 
jamin Lundy. Lundy was a Quaker who had con- 
trived so to advocate the ultimate emancipation of 
the slaves as not only to avoid offending the South, 
but even to win support, moral and financial, from 
slave-owners. Garrison, in a Fourth-of-July speech 
in Park Street Church, Boston, had already assented 
to the doctrine of gradual emancipation, but the 
publication in the Genius of his frank recantation, 
together with a demand for immediate and complete 
emancipation, placed him on the ground on which 
he was thereafter to stand. The new policy, how- 
ever, so alienated public support and incensed pub- 
lic opinion in Baltimore that in six months the part- 
nership had to be abandoned, w^hile the outspoken 
editor had also to undergo a short term of imprison- 
ment for violation of a ]\Iaryland statute. After an 
unsuccessful attempt to establish a paper in Wash- 
ington, Garrison returned to Boston, and on January 
I, 1 83 1, issued the first number of the Liberator. 
The opening address to the public was as ominous as 
it was characteristic: 

" I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as 
justice. On this subject, I do not wish to think, or speak, or 
write, with moderation. ... I am in earnest— I will not 
equivocate — I will not excuse — I will not retreat a single mch 
— and I will be heard. The apathy of the people is enough 
to make every statue leap from its pedestal, and to hasten 
the "resurrection of the dead." 

445 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

Of fine presence, self - controlled, with well - bred 
manners; usually quiet in speech, yet capable of 
great vehemence when needful. Garrison was in spirit 
and method one to be classed as an extremist. He 
had clearness of perception rather than breadth of 
vision. With the economic aspects of slavery he 
never particularly concerned himself. He had no 
sympathy with the attitude of compromise and ad- 
justment in which political leaders so often approach 
the solution of great questions; all questions were to 
him absolute. He unquestionably magnified his own 
importance and minimized the work of others; and 
he certainly alienated for the moment the mass of 
influential people in the North, while his radical views 
on other questions than slavery left him for many 
years under a cloud of suspicion and distrust. Yet it 
may well be doubted if a man of less concentrated 
and intense nature could have roused public opinion, 
or broken down the wall of vested interests with 
which the institution of slavery was surroimded. 
What Garrison saw, and saw with undimmed clear- 
ness, was the moral wrong of slavery ; and to a mind 
which, like his, had been trained under the awful 
system of theology which New England had not yet 
repudiated, questions of right and wrong admitted 
of no compromise and predominated over every 
other consideration. It was well that the moral is- 
sue should be thus aggressively defined, since it was 
upon that issue that the battle was soon to be joined; 
but the constitutional position of the abolition leader 
was not always, in the public eye, free from doubt. 
A heated denunciation of the Constitution of the 
United States as "a covenant with death and an 
agreement with hell" laid Garrison open to the charge 

446 



ABOLITION OF SLAVERY 

of advocating the abolition of slavery by unconsti- 
tutional means. The charge rests upon a. radical 
misconception of Garrison's position. Vigorous as 
was his denunciation of compromise, and of legisla- 
tion which, though constitutional, he held to be mor- 
ally wrong; willing as he eventually seemed to be 
that the Union should perish rather than that sla- 
very should continue to receive national protection, 
he nevertheless advocated no unconstitutional pro- 
gramme, as he understood the Constitution, preached 
no disloyalty, fomented no treason. It was for Sew- 
ard later to proclaim the doctrine of the " higher 
law," by which all constitutions and laws of hu- 
man making must stand or fall, but the doctrine 
was Garrison's before it was Seward's. It was 
the work of the abolitionists to drive into the 
Union, with hard and unsparing blows, a wedge of 
moral conviction, and therewith to divide the na- 
tion, not, happily, to its permanent undoing, but 
to the end that the United States might be, 
in fact as well as in word, a "more perfect" 
Union. 

Garrison's views were first systematically indicated 
in his Thoughts on African Colonization, published in 
1832. In this work he attacked the American Col- 
onization Society, organized in 1816, on the ground 
that it was pledged not to oppose the system of 
slavery, but apologized for slavery and the slave- 
holders; that it recognized slaves as property and 
increased their value by every deportation; that it 
was the enemy of immediate emancipation, aimed at 
the utter expulsion of the blacks, and denied the 
possibility of elevating the blacks in this country; 
and, finally, that it was nourished by fear and self- 

447 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

ishness, and deceived and misled the nation.^ The 
mass of facts with which the indictment was sustained 
made the book a favorite arsenal of weapons for anti- 
slavery speakers and writers. From the attack thus 
begun, Garrison did not desist until, in this country 
and England, the whole scheme of negro deportation 
had been abandoned in favor of emancipation. 

The same year in which the Thoughts appeared 
saw the formation of the New England Antislavery 
Society, followed in December, 1833, by the organiza- 
tion, at Philadelphia, of the American Antislavery 
Society. The constitution of the national society de- 
manded immediate abolition by the States and the. 
federal government, but opposed all violent or un- 
constitutional measures, and expressly declared 
against slave insurrections. The latter declaration 
was particularly significant in view of the charge, 
wholly without foundation, that the abolitionists two 
years before had stirred up the Nat Turner insur- 
rection in Southampton County, Virginia, in which 
some sixty white persons had been killed. The for- 
mation of local societies went on apace, each society 
becoming the centre of an active propaganda through 
public meetings, private discussions, and the circula- 
tion of abolition books, pamphlets, and newspapers. 
From England, in 1834, came George Thompson to 
aid in the work, and in 1840 the American and For- 
eign Antislavery Society was formed for internation- 
al agitation. Great Britain had already, in 1833, 
abolished slavery throughout the empire, and a 
papal bull had arrayed against the institution the 
opposition of the Church. 

* Johnson, Garrison, 114, 115. 
448 



ABOLITION OF SLAVERY 

But the organized attack on Slavery was not to go 
on without encountering stubborn and violent re- 
sistance. The radical utterances of Garrison cut to 
the quick, and before long provoked riotous response. 
Prudence Crandall, a Quakeress, head of a school for 
young ladies at Canterbury, Connecticut, admitted 
colored pupils, in consequence of which the State of 
Connecticut forbade by statute the opening of schools 
for colored persons without the consent of the town 
authorities, while Miss Crandall herself was shame- 
fully persecuted by her neighbors, imprisoned, and 
her school broken up. There were riots in New York 
City in 1834, in Boston and Utica in 1835. In Boston 
a mob dragged Garrison through the streets with a 
rope around his waist, until the mayor lodged him in 
jail for safety. At Canaan, New Hampshire, the 
building of Noyes Academy, where white and negro 
pupils were received, was "removed" by vote of the 
town-meeting, a hundred yoke of oxen dragging the 
building from its foundations to the neighboring town 
common.^ In December, 1837, Rev. Elijah P. Love- 
joy, editor of an anti slavery religious newspaper at 
Alton, Illinois, was murdered by a mob. The trag- 
edy called out, in Faneuil Hall, Boston, the first pub- 
lic speech of Wendell Phillips, whose burning elo- 
quence was thenceforward a powerful aid to the 
abolition cause. At Bowdoin College a covert at- 
tempt on the part of the trustees to remove the pro- 
fessor of mathematics, suspected of abolition lean- 
ings, was frustrated only by the devotion of the 
students, who presented to the examining committee 
such unassailable proof of proficiency that the charge 

* Garrison's Garrison, I., 494. 
449 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

of incompetency, whioh the trustees had alone dared 
to urge, could not be sustained. In hardly any com- 
munity in the North could abolition sentiments be 
expressed without fear of social, business, or religious 
ostracism, and not seldom of violence to person or 
property. 

The first effects of the abolition movement in the 
South were seen in increased severity towards the 
slaves, and demands that the northern States sup- 
press the agitation and, if necessary, muzzle the 
press. A Georgia statute of 1831 offered a reward of 
five thousand dollars for the apprehension and con- 
viction, under the law of the State, of Garrison or 
any person circulating copies of the Liberator. The 
action of the abolitionists in sending their literature 
to the South roused intense opposition, though it was 
not clear that negroes who could not read were likely 
to be much affected by newspapers and books; and 
there was a demand for the exclusion of such publica- 
tions from the mails. As early as October, 1831, free 
persons of color in Georgetown, District of Columbia, 
had been forbidden by statute to take the Liberator 
from the post-office, under pain of twenty dollars' fine 
or thirty days' imprisonment. In July, 1835, the mails 
at Charleston were rifled and a quantity of abolition 
documents destroyed. The postmaster at New York, 
acting on the suggestion of the postmaster at Charles- 
ton, refused to forward abolition matter, and was 
upheld in his action by the Postmaster-general, Amos 
Kendall. In his annual message of the following 
December, Jackson, evidently ignorant of the char- 
acter of the literature he was denouncing, urged upon 
Congress " the propriety of passing such a law as will 
prohibit, under severe penalties, the circulation in 

450 



ABOLITION OF SLAVERY 

the southern States, through the mail, of incendiary 
publications intended to instigate the slaves to insur- 
rection"; but an attempt in the Senate, by a com- 
mittee of which Calhoun was chairman, to fasten upon 
the post-office appropriation bill of 1836 a provision 
authorizing postmasters to detain suspected matter, 
fortunately failed. 

The inherent antagonism between slavery and free 
thought was shown far more seriously, however, in 
the temporary denial by Congress of the right of 
petition. In furtherance of their constitutional agi- 
tation, the abolitionists, following an example set 
by the Quakers almost from the organization of the 
government, had begun systematically to petition 
Congress to abolish slavery in the District of Colum- 
bia, and in other places over which the federal gov- 
ernment had exclusive jurisdiction. The anger and 
irritation of southern members increased with the 
rising volume of memorial and request. The right 
to petition the government for a redress of grievances 
is justly regarded as one of the most precious privi- 
leges of the citizen, and the denial of the right a 
serious encroachment upon political liberty. May 
25, 1836, however, the House of Representatives, 
after declaring that Congress possessed no consti- 
tutional authority to interfere with slavery in any 
State, and that slavery ought not to be abolished in 
the District of ColumlDia, voted "that all petitions, 
memorials, propositions, or papers, relating in any 
way, or to any extent whatever, to the subject of 
slavery, shall, without being printed or referred, be 
laid upon the table, and that no further action what- 
ever shall be had thereon." In January, 1840, a 
rule of the House declared that no such petition 

451 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

should be received, "or entertained in any way 
whatever." 

Against this arbitrary action John Quincy Adams, 
who, after his not altogether successful administra- 
tion as President, had begun, in 1831, a brilliant 
career in the House of Representatives, vigorously 
protested. Adams owed his support at home in part 
to the abolitionists, with whose main purposes he 
was now in practical accord, and he refused to abate 
this agitation imtil, in 1844, the "gag-rule" was re- 
pealed. Rarely has the atmosphere of the House 
been more charged with passion and hate than during 
the years when Adams was waging his splendid fight 
for free speech and free thought. Petitions for his 
expulsion and threats of personal violence did not 
intimidate him. In February, 1837, there was talk 
of censuring him for presenting a petition signed by 
slaves, and the anger of the House was only increased 
when it finally came out that the prayei*of the peti- 
tioners was against abolition, not in favor of it. An 
attempt to expel Adams, in 1842, happily failed. 
Joshua R. Giddings, of Ohio, who ably seconded 
Adams's efforts, was censured by the House for his 
conduct, resigned his seat, was triumphantly re- 
elected by his constituents, and shortly returned with 
an endorsement which even the angry and excited 
House dared not disregard. 

A recent historian, whose attitude towards the 
early abolition agitation is far from friendly, gives 
it as his opinion that " the whole course of the internal 
history of the United States from 1836 to 1861 was 
more largely determined by the struggle in Congress 
over the aboHtion petitions and the use of the mails 
for the distribution of the abolition literature than 

452 



ABOLITION OF SLAVERY 

by anything else.'" The demand for immediate 
emancipation, indeed, had put slavery on the de- 
fensive, and while the North was slow in rousing, 
the extreme claims of southern leaders in Congress, 
revealing as they did an evident determination to 
suppress all discussion on the subject, were themselves 
a confession of weakness. The federal administra- 
tion, however, was largely in the hands of able men 
from the southern States, as it had been for most 
of the years since 1789; and whether slavery was an 
evil or a good, it was not likely to be either over- 
thrown or seriously restricted without prolonged re- 
sistance. 

In 1840 the abolitionists were for the first time 
able to put a Presidential ticket in the field, though 
the decision so to do made a permanent breach in the 
abolition ranks, a large number, including Garrison, 
holding the formation of a third party to be inex- 
pedient. The Democratic platform of 1840 denied 
the right of Congress to interfere with the domestic 
institutions of any State, and denounced the aboli- 
tion agitation as "calculated to lead to the most 
alarming and dangerous consequences" and to "en- 
danger the stability and permanency of the Union." 
The Whigs were not yet prepared to take issue with 
the Democrats on this point. The abolition con- 
vention in December, 1839, held at Warsaw, New 
York, nominated James G. Birney, of New York, for 
President, and Thomas Earle, of Pennsylvania, for 
Vice-president. Birney had been an Alabama slave- 
holder, but had been converted to abolition through 
belief in colonization and gradual emancipation. In 

' Burgess, JMiddlc Period, 274. 
453 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

the election of 1840 these candidates polled but 7069 
votes in a total vote of 2,411,187; but the day of 
greater things was at hand. Until the Thirteenth 
Amendment had abolished slavery, the question of 
abolition was destined not to be absent from any 
Presidential campaign. It remained to be seen 
whether, under the stress of practical politics, the 
agitation could be kept free from dangerous entangle- 
ments, or could accept the temporary expedients 
which are a necessary accompaniment of every great 
reform. 



XX 

TERRITORIAL SLAVERY 

JACKSON'S choice of a successor fell upon his 
Vice-president, Martin Van Buren. As Secretary 
of State and Vice-president, Van Buren had had ex- 
perience in national administration, while his earlier 
membership in the political group known as the 
"Albany Regency" had given him an acquaintance 
with "practical politics" such as few men of his 
generation possessed. Bom of an old New York 
family, bred to wealth and social position, he was in 
striking contrast to the rough-and-ready champion 
of democracy who now pressed his candidacy to a 
successful issue. Yet his path to the Presidency was 
strewn with difficulties. Van Buren, though Secretary 
of State, was well known to have been also intimate 
with the so-called kitchen cabinet to which Jackson, 
in his first administration, had given his confidence; 
and when, in 1831, following Calhotm's attack upon 
Jackson for the latter's course in the Seminole war, 
there came the break-up of the cabinet, the nomina- 
tion of Van Buren to be Minister to Great Britain 
was rejected by the Senate. The rejection was the 
more humiliating because achieved by the casting 
vote of Calhoun, then Vice-president, and because 
Van Buren, confident of his confirmation, had al- 
ready presented his credentials at the court of St. 

455 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

James. In January, 1835, the legislature of Jackson's 
own State, Tennessee, though well aware of Jackson's 
wishes, had nominated Senator Hugh L. White, of 
that State, for President, and the nomination was 
shortly seconded by the legislature of Alabama. 

The campaign which followed profited more by the 
dissensions and weakness of the opposition than by 
the strength of Van Buren. The Whig party, or- 
ganized in 1834, was an unfused aggregation of Nat- 
ional Republicans, moderate State-rights men or 
Nullifiers, Anti-Masons, and "Jackson men " who re- 
sented what they held to be the usurpation of ex- 
ecutive authority by the President. The members 
of this party generally supported William Henry 
Harrison, of Ohio, the nominee of an Anti-Masonic 
convention at Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. The leg- 
islature of Ohio nominated Judge John McLean, of 
that State, and the Massachusetts Whigs presented 
Webster, who, it was thought, would carry New Eng- 
land. There were certainly candidates enough, and 
to spare. The Democratic party, on the other hand, 
had the better organization, and made the most of 
the popular opposition to the bank of the United 
States, with whose support the majority of the Whigs 
were identified. The Democratic convention, held 
in Baltimore in May, 1835 — more than seventeen 
months before the election — cast a unanimous vote 
for Van Buren. In the election Van Buren received 
170 electoral votes against 73 for Harrison, his prin- 
cipal competitor. The popular vote, however, show- 
ed no such overwhelming majority, the vote for Van 
Buren being 762,987, against 736,250 for the com- 
bined Whig opposition. Neither candidate for Vice- 
president received a majority of the electoral votes, 

456 



TERRITORIAL SLAVERY 

and for the first and only time in our history the 
choice devolved upon the Senate, in accordance with 
the provisions of the Constitution. By a vote of ^^ 
to 1 6, the Senate chose Richard M. Johnson, of Ken- 
tucky, the Democratic candidate. 

"I leave this great people prosperous and happy," 
wrote Jackson, in a farewell address ; and Van Buren's 
inaugural echoed the words. Both were deceived. 
Van Buren professed to be the ■ legitimate successor 
of Jackson, and aimed to make his administration a 
logical continuation of that of his great predecessor. 
He took over five of the six members of Jackson's 
cabinet, retaining two of them throughout his term. 
But the disastrous financial crisis which began when 
the administration was little more than two months 
old was also an inheritance; for while Van Buren, 
in accordance with the political custom of all coun- 
tries, got the blame for all the evils that befell the 
country during his term of office, the most patent 
cause of the panic was to be found in the commercial 
and financial disorder wrought by Jackson's war on 
the bank and the drastic specie circular of July, 1836, 
To these causes were also to be added speculative 
fever, a heavy excess of imports over exports, the 
failure of banks and commercial houses in Great 
Britain, and bad crops at home. In March, 1837, it 
was reported that "the value of real estate in New 
York had in six months depreciated more than $40,- 
000,000 ; in two months there had been more than 
two htmdred and fifty failures; there had been a 
decline of $20,000,000 in the value of the stocks of 
railroads and canals which centred in New York ; the 
value of merchandise in warehouses had fallen thirty 
per cent., and within a few weeks 20,000 persons had 
30 457 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

been discharged by their employers." ^ On May loth 
the New York banks suspended specie payment. Van 
Buren, though urged to rescind the specie circular, 
refused to interfere, wisely concluding that the panic 
had best run its course. An issue of Treasury notes 
in October, the work of a special session of Congress, 
afEorded a little relief, but it was not until the latter 
part of 1838 that specie payment was generally re- 
sumed. 

Of the political questions which came to the front 
during Van Buren's administration, the most impor- 
tant, so far as its national consequences were con- 
cerned, was the proposed annexation of Texas. The 
revolts of the Spanish colonies in America against 
the Bourbon dynasty in Spain began in 1808, and 
were renewed in 181 9 with such success that when, 
in December, 1823, the Monroe doctrine was pro- 
claimed, every main-land colony in Central and South 
America had achieved independence. Mexico, which 
had revolted in 1821, adopted three years later a 
federal form of government. In 1827 the states of 
Texas and Coahuila were united under a constitution 
which prohibited the further importation of slaves, 
and provided for the gradual emancipation of slaves 
already in the country. Two years later Mexico 
itself abolished slavery. 

Texas was a vast area. It was large enough to 
make five States of the size of Alabama, six of the 
size of Pennsylvania. In its northern portion the 
fertile black belt reached its greatest extent. More- 
over, the State lay south of the parallel of latitude 
which, since the compromise of 1820, had been re- 

1 Dewey, Financial History of the United States, 231. 
458 



T E R R I T O R I A T. S T. A V E R Y 

garded as the dividing line between free States and 
slave. Naturally, therefore, the demand arose for 
the annexation of Texas to the United States, a de- 
mand which gathered additional force from the im- 
pression, which with many easily became a convic- 
tion, that John Quincy Adams, in negotiating with 
Spain the Florida treaty of 1819, had sacrificed a 
valid claim of the United States to part of the region 
beyond the Sabine River. Attempts to purchase 
Texas, however, in 1827, and again in 1829, failed, 
and by a treaty, made in 1828, but not ratified until 
1832, the boundary fixed by the treaty of 181 9 was 
confirmed. Meantime, an appreciable migration into 
Texas, principally from the southern States, had set 
in, and in 1833 a new constitution, framed under 
American influence, was adopted. When, then, in 
1835, the President of Mexico, Santa Anna, imdertook 
to replace the federal government of Mexico by a 
centralized system, which transformed the States 
into provinces, Texas resisted, defeated the Mexican 
forces at the battle of San Jacinto, and declared itself 
independent under a constitution which established 
slavery. 

To the Americans in Texas, independence was only 
a first step towards union with the United States. 
But there were difficulties in the way. The indepen- 
dence of Texas, indeed, was promptly recognized, but 
annexation was for the present declined. The vast 
size of the new State would, it was feared, make its 
acquisition too much of a concession to slavery, es- 
pecially now that the abolition agitation was forcing 
the question of slavery harshly to the front. The 
doctrine of a balance of power between the North 
and the South, embodied in the Missouri Compro- 

459 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

mise, still held sway and might not lightly be ignored. 
Yet the suggestion of annexation could not at once 
be put aside. In December, 1836, and again in 
August, 1837, Texas applied for admission, but each 
time without success. There was certainly ground 
for hoping that the application would be favorably 
considered, for the United States had notoriously 
neglected its duties as a neutral in allowing recruits 
for the Texan army to be openly enlisted within its 
borders, and had sent its own troops, under General 
Gaines, into Texas with only the shadowy pretext 
of guarding against a threatened Indian outbreak. 
The firm attitude of John Quincy Adams defeated 
annexation for the time being. In a speech in June, 
1838, on a resolution submitted in the House, Adams 
declared that the annexation of the people of an in- 
dependent foreign state by act of Congress would be, 
in his opinion, a usurpation of power " which it would 
be right and the duty of the free people of the Union 
to resist and annul." For three weeks Adams rang 
the changes on this theme until the country was 
thoroughly aroused and the proposed incorporation 
of Texas defeated. 

There was no further agitation of the question in 
Congress during Van Buren's term. The Democrats, 
notwithstanding their superior organization and more 
.definite principles, were losing ground. The Con- 
gressional elections of 1837 and 1838 went against 
them; by 1839 they had nearly lost the control of 
the House ; and the election of 1 840 completed their 
overthrow. Against Van Buren and all his works 
the Whigs were now prepared to fight with united 
strength, provided they could agree upon a suitable 
leader. The most conspicuous candidate, whether 

460 







1)A\1K1. W'KBSriik 
[From the painting b\- G. P. A. Hualy, nuw in Fancuil Hall, Boston] 



TERRITORIAL SLAVERY 

in ability or in public service, was Henry Clay, his 
fame as yet undimmed by skilful practice of com- 
promise. Clay, however, was a protectionist, and as 
such objectionable to the South, while his member- 
ship in the order of Free Masons antagonized the 
anti-masonic sentiment, which was still strong in the 
East. For the welfare of his party, therefore, he 
wisely decided not to press his candidacy. His only 
competitor was William Henry Harrison, whose pub- 
lic life, if not distinguished, had been at least credit- 
able, and who had neither principles nor record that 
needed to be explained. He had been a soldier, had 
made a strong canvass in 1836, and could command 
the vote of the West. Harrison, accordingly, re- 
ceived the nomination. The candidate for Vice- 
president was John Tyler, of Virginia, an able, dis- 
tinguished, high-minded Democrat, who had come 
to believe himself a Whig. No platform or declara- 
tion of principles was thought necessary; the party 
creed was sufficiently summed up in opposition to 
Van Buren and to the " Loco-focos," as the Democrats 
were popularly called. 

The Democrats, apparently as confident as ever 
of victory, unanimously nominated Van Buren for a 
second term. They were unable, however, to agree 
on a candidate for Vice-president, and left that of- 
fice to be filled by the independent action of the 
States. The platform took firm grotmd against in- 
ternal improvements, protection, and a United States 
bank, and denounced the aboHtionists. The cam- 
paign was unlike anything the country had yet 
known. For the Whigs it was log-cabins and hard 
cider, "Tippecanoe and Tyler, too," bands, parades, 
and vast public meetings. General Harrison himself 

461 



HISTORY OF'THE UNITED STATES 

was persuaded to "take the stump" in Ohio. It 
was a campaign of noise and enthusiasm, not of prin- 
ciples, and against the swelling tide of popular ex- 
citement the Democrats could make no headway. 
Harrison carried nineteen of the twenty-six States, 
receiving 234 electoral votes to 60 for his opponent; 
and there was also a Whig majority in both houses 
of Congress. The popular vote for President, how- 
ever, showed no large majority, the vote being 1,275,- 
016 for Harrison and 1,129,102 for Van Buren. In 
most of the States the vote was close. 

So far as the popular vote went the election of 
1840 indicated no radical change of public opinion, 
no emphatic demand for a change in national policy. 
The Whigs, though they had fought a successful 
campaign with a popular candidate, had had no plat- 
form, and were of too mixed a complexion to have 
as yet a well-defined party policy; and the sudden 
death of President Harrison a month after his in- 
auguration threw the executive administration into 
the hands of a man whose Whig principles implied 
nothing more than a refusal to accept all parts of the 
Democratic programme. Trouble was not long in ap- 
pearing. As the result of persistent effort through- 
out nearly the whole of Van Buren's term, an act had 
been passed in 1840 establishing an independent 
treasury system, under which the federal govern- 
ment cared for the national moneys without the 
agency of a bank. That act was now promptly re- 
pealed, and a bill for a national bank — a cardinal 
point in the Whig policy — was brought in and passed. 
To the amazement of the Whigs, Tyler vetoed the 
bill. In the time of Jackson's ascendency he had 
opposed on principle the recharter of the Bank of 

462 



TERRITORIAL SLAVERY 

the United States, and now that he himself as Presi- 
dent was confronted with essentially the same propo- 
sition, his constitutional scruples did not desert him. 
A second bill, prepared, it was supposed, in harmony 
with his views, was also vetoed. Thereupon the 
Whig leaders in Congress issued a statement declar- 
ing that "those who brought the President into pow- 
er can be no longer, in any manner or degree, justly 
held responsible or blamed for the administration of 
the executive branch of the government "; the cabi- 
net, with the exception of Webster, the Secretary of 
State, resigned, and Tyler thenceforth stood alone. 

No provision was made until 1 846 for the care and 
management of government money, save as the Sec- 
retary of the Treasury directed. Only one substan- 
tial part of the hastily constructed Whig programme 
was saved. The tariff of 1842, replacing with increased 
rates the twenty per cent, duty provided for under 
the compromise tariff of 1833, received executive ap- 
proval, though only after the failure of two attempts 
to couple with it a scheme for the distribution of the 
surplus revenue among the States. 

The most important diplomatic success of Tyler's 
administration was the conclusion, in August, 1842, 
of a treaty with Great Britain — known as the Ash- 
burton treaty — ^bringing to a close the long-standing 
controversy over the northeastern boundary of the 
United States. It was the negotiations connected 
with this treaty that had kept Webster at his post 
when his colleagues of the cabinet resigned. An at- 
tempted settlement of the boundary question by a 
reference of the matter in dispute to the King of the 
Netherlands as arbitrator, in 1827, had failed, the 
award being rejected by both parties in 183 1. In the 

463 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

fall and winter of 1838-39 the region claimed jointly 
by Maine and New Brunswick threatened to become 
the theatre of border warfare. The State of Maine 
erected forts and voted $800,000 for defence. The 
intervention of General Winfield Scott, however, 
averted hostilities, and a temporary joint occupa- 
tion of the disputed territory was arranged. By the 
treaty of 1842 the boundary was finally settled. The 
treaty also provided for the maintenance by each gov- 
ernment of a naval squadron on the west coast of 
Africa, for the suppression of the slave-trade; but, so 
far as the United States was concerned, the resulting 
interference with the trade was slight. 

The Texas question, meantime, had been quietly 
developing. Van Buren's refusal to act had not pre- 
vented the continuance of the agitation for annexa- 
tion in the South. Resolutions of State legislatures 
and speeches of Congressmen voiced the growing de- 
mand of that section. President Tyler, by birth and 
training a Southerner, and perhaps encouraged by 
the change from a Whig to a Democratic majority in 
the House of Representatives as a result of the Con- 
gressional elections of 1842, was sympathetic — had 
not Jefferson been the first annexationist ? — and was 
easily induced to open secret negotiations with Texas. 
In March, 1844, Calhoun, who was convinced that 
England was acquiring undue influence in Texas, 
became Secretary of State, and in April a treaty of 
annexation was signed and submitted to the Senate. 
The surprise was wellnigh complete, but political 
reasons suggested delay. It would not be wise, on 
the eve of a Presidential election, to commit the 
United States to a step of such far-reaching conse- 
quences without assurance of popular support. The 

464 



TERRITORIAL SLAVERY 

breach with Tyler had given the Whigs political tinity, 
and they were confident of being able easily to elect 
their favorite candidate, Clay. The Democrats, on 
the other hand, "seemed to be, and were, in hope- 
less discord."* But the proposed " reannexation " 
changed the face of the situation. Whether or not 
the United States had a valid claim to Texas mat- 
tered little. The patent fact now was that annexa- 
tion without the consent of Mexico would mean war; 
and was there any party that would venture deliber- 
ately to embark on an aggressive war? 

Tyler had no party, but he had made annexation 
the issue of the hour. It was necessary for the can- 
didates to declare themselves. In letters shortly 
made public both Clay and Van Buren put them- 
selves on record as opposed to annexation against 
the will of Mexico. Van Buren's attitude cost him 
the nomination. Although a large majority of the 
delegates to the Democratic convention at Balti- 
more were instructed for Van Buren, they refused to 
obey when his opinion became known, and a unani- 
mous vote was cast for James K. Polk, of Tennessee, 
a sound and consistent Democrat, with a creditable 
record as Speaker of the House of Representatives. 
The platform called for "the reoccupation of Oregon, 
and the reannexation of Texas at the earliest prac- 
ticable period," as "great American measures." The 
Whigs had already nominated Clay on a platform 
which made no mention of Texas. The campaign, 
resembling in some of its features that of 1840, was 
vigorously pressed on both sides. Polk received 170 
electoral votes to 105 for Clay, and the Democrats 

■ Stanwood, History of the Presidency, 209. 
465 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

were again in power. The significance of the popular 
vote did not escape notice. James G. Bimey, again 
the candidate of the abolitionists, polled 62,300 votes, 
nearly nine times as many as those cast for him in 
1840; and it was the abolition vote that determined 
the result. Had the abolitionists voted for Clay, 
the Whig candidate would have received a majority 
of both electoral and popular votes. Clearly aboli- 
tion was a political force to be reckoned with, and 
neither Whig enmity nor Democratic opposition could 
hereafter afEord to ignore it. 

On June 8th the Senate, by a decisive vote of 16 
to 35, had rejected the treaty of annexation. Two 
days later the President laid the rejected treaty, to- 
gether with all the correspondence and docimients 
previously considered by the Senate in executive 
session, before the House of Representatives, thereby 
appealing to the people for the support of his policy. 
The election in November was a victory for annexa- 
tion. Tyler could triumphantly assert, in his annual 
message in December, that "it is the will of both the 
people and the States that Texas shall be annexed 
to the Union promptly and immediately"; and he 
proposed that since the terms of annexation had al- 
ready been agreed upon, an act or joint resolution 
be passed by Congress to bring the result about. 
Tyler's administration, notable for its lack of party 
harmony, had at last found its opportunity. A joint 
resolution was at once introduced, and on March i, 
1845, received the approval of the President. Texas 
was admitted as a State, subject to the approval by 
Congress of its constitution thereafter to be adopted, 
and with the proviso that new States, not exceeding 
four in number .besides Texas, might, with the con- 

466 



TERRITORIAL S L x\ \' E R Y 

sent of Texas, be formed out of the territory thus 
acquired. The terms of annexation were accepted 
by the Texan Congress in June, and by a convention 
at Austin in July. In October a constitution was rati- 
fied by popular vote, and on December 29th another 
joint resolution formally admitted Texas as a State, 
The area of the acquisition was 389,795 square miles, 
or about 125,000 square miles more than the area of 
the present State. 

Five days after the approval of the resolution for 
annexation, the Mexican Minister entered the pro- 
test of his government against it and demanded his 
passports, and by the end of the month diplomatic 
relations between the two governments were severed. 
More than a year elapsed, however, before hostilities 
actually broke out or a formal declaration of war was 
made. To many it seemed as though the assertion 
which had repeatedly been made in Congress, that 
the United States in acquiring Texas would not ac- 
quire also the war between Texas and Mexico, was 
to be proved true. The failure of Mexico to recover 
Texas made it, indeed, imlikely that she would have 
any better success now that the revolted State had 
become a part of the United States. " It was gen- 
erally expected that Mexico would make a great ado 
over annexation, but it was considered utterly im- 
probable that her actions would follow her words, or 
would, in any way, correspond to them." * Presi- 
dent Polk had ordered, a strong squadron to the coast 
of Mexico and concentrated a military force on the 
western frontier of Texas, but he was able to inform 
Congress in his annual message of December 2, 1845, 

» Ven Hoist, United States, III., 81. 
467 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

that Mexico had as yet "made no aggressive move- 
ment," and that the peace of the two republics had 
"not been disturbed." 

The boundary dispute between Texas and Mexico 
provided the needed occasion. The southern bound- 
ary of Texas extended only to the Nueces River. 
Texas claimed, however, the territory of Coahuila, 
which reached to the Rio Grande, although Coahuila 
had not joined Texas in the revolt against Mexico; 
and the Congress of Texas, in 1836, had declared the 
Rio Grande to be the boundary of the republic. As 
the Congress was a revolutionary body, and the au- 
thority of Texas had never been successfully estab- 
lished beyond the Nueces, the claim to the region 
between the rivers had no standing in law and but 
little in fact. The question was one in regard to 
which the United States, after the annexation, would 
have to reach a conclusion; but Polk, ignoring the 
fact that the decision was one for Congress rather, 
than the President, took the reins into his own hands. 
General Zachary Taylor, in command of the United 
States forces in Texas, had already, under orders 
from the President, crossed the Nueces River, where 
his army had gradually been increased to about 4000 
men. In January, 1846, Polk ordered a further ad- 
vance to the Rio Grande, and on March 28th Taylor 
took up a position opposite Matamoras. The Mexi- 
can commander ordered him to withdraw, and on 
Taylor's refusal, attacked and captured, April 25th, a 
small party of American dragoons, some sixteen of 
the Americans being killed or wotinded. On May 8th 
and 9th Taylor defeated the Mexicans at Palo Alto 
and Resaca de la Palma, drove them across the river, 
and took Matamoras. 

468 



TERRITORIAL SLAVERY 

On May nth President Polk sent to Congress a 
special message, in which he declared that " now, after 
reiterated menaces, Mexico has passed the boimdary 
of the United States, has invaded our territory, and 
shed American blood upon the American soil"; and 
that, " as war exists, and, notwithstanding all our 
efforts to avoid it, exists by the act of Mexico herself, 
we are called upon by every consideration of duty 
and patriotism to vindicate with decision the honor, 
the rights, and the interests of our country." An act 
providing 50,000 volunteers and $10,000,000 for the 
prosecution of the war was at once passed. The as- 
sertion of the message and of the act that war existed 
"by act of Mexico" was vehemently denied by the 
Whigs, who insisted that hostilities had been brought 
about by deliberate aggression on the part of the 
United States. In the country at large, however, 
and particularly in the South, "Polk's war" was 
popular. When the 50,000 volunteers were called 
for 200,000 responded. Only in New England were 
enlistments small. 

Before the war was fairly under way, a treaty with 
Great Britain had brought the Oregon question to 
amicable settlement. The region known as Oregon 
had been claimed by both Great Britain and the 
United States, the claim of the latter going back to 
the discovery of the Columbia River by a Captain 
Gray ini79i. Ini8i3 the two countries agreed to a 
joint occupancy of the country for ten years. The 
limits of the region were further defined by the treaty 
of 1 81 9 between the United States and Spain, by 
which the parallel 42° north latitude was declared to 
be the northern boundary of Spanish territory on 
the Pacific. Subsequent treaties with Russia fixed 

469 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

the southern limits of the Russian possessions at 54° 
40'. Permanent settlements began about 1830, and 
a small American population, attracted by the fur- 
trade and the opportunities of a new country, was 
gradually established there. Fremont visited Oregon 
in 1842, on one of his exploring expeditions, and a 
demand for the definite incorporation of the country 
with the United States, and the dispossession of 
Great Britain, presently arose. We have already 
seen that the Democratic platform, in 1844, de- 
manded the " reoccupation ' ' of Oregon, " the intention 
being, of course, to use Oregon as an offset to Texas " ; 
and Polk, in his inaugural address, asserted his pur- 
pose to maintain the rights of the United States in 
that part of the world. The difficulty was to agree 
with Great Britain upon the proper boundary. In 
the course of the diplomatic negotiations the parallel 
of 49° was several times proposed, but was rejected 
by Great Britain. Popular opposition to compromise 
brought out demands for "all Oregon," and for a 
time the country rang with the cry, " Fifty-four forty 
or fight!" In the summer of 1846 the controversy 
was settled. The United States accepted the line of 
49°, with the free navigation of the Columbia River. 
The total area of the region thus acquired was 288,- 
689 square miles. A bill to organize a territorial 
government for Oregon was rejected by the Senate, 
in 1845, because of the prohibition of slavery, and it 
was not until 1848 that a territorial government was 
at last provided. 

The military story of the Mexican War is one brief- 
ly told. Notwithstanding the stubbornness and skill 
with which the Mexicans opposed "the American ad- 
vance, it was from the outset an unequal contest, 

470 



TERRITORIAL SLAVERY 

whose final outcome did not admit of doubt. On 
May 1 8th, five days after Congress voted men and 
money for the war, Taylor occupied Matamoras. 
California was shortly taken by fleets under the 
command of Commodores Sloat and Stockton, aid- 
ed by a land force under Fremont. A force under 
General Kearney, advancing overland from Fort 
Leavenworth, on the Missouri River, took Santa Fe, 
and with it New Mexico. In September Taylor took 
Monterey, where he established winter - quarters. 
Kearney, leaving Colonel Doniphan at Santa Fe, 
pushed on to California, while Doniphan shortly took 
Chihuahua and joined Taylor at Monterey. A large 
part of the northern possessions of Mexico was now 
in the hands of the United States. It was decided 
to keep what had been won, whatever the outcome 
of the war, but to pay Mexico for it ; and the remainder 
of the war was fought to compel the submission of 
Mexico and prevent it from recovering the conquered 
provinces. 

The campaign of 1847 began with the advance of 
Taylor southwest from Monterey, while General 
Scott started for the city of Mexico by way of Vera 
Cruz. At Buena Vista, on February 23d, Taylor, 
with a force of about five thousand men, overwhelm- 
ingly defeated a Mexican army of four times that 
number, under command of Santa Anna. This closed 
the active campaign in the north. Taylor, whose 
force had been reduced to aid Scott, shortly relin- 
quished his command and returned to the United 
States, where his successful "war record" was short- 
ly to give him the Presidency. Scott, meantime, had 
taken Vera Cruz early in March, and immediately be- 
gan his advance upon the Mexican capital. The land 

471 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

rises rapidly from the coast to the interior, and the 
steep ascent and narrow mountain-passes admirably 
fit the country for defence. On April i8th, however, 
Scott carried by storm the heights of Cerro Gordo, 
from whence he pressed on to Puebla, where he re- 
mained for two months to rest his army. In August, 
with a force numbering ii,ooo men, the advance was 
resumed. The city of Mexico lay in a basin sur- 
rounded by marshes, and the approaches and points 
of vantage had been strongly fortified. On August 
19th the two armies met, the battles of Contreras, 
San Antonio, and Churubusco being all fought on that 
day. The Mexican army, numbering about thirty 
thousand, fought desperately, but to no purpose. 
That the Mexicans might not be humiliated by the 
actual capture of the city by the Americans, Scctt 
agreed to a proposal from Santa Anna for an armis- 
tice of three weeks in which to negotiate for peace. 
The negotiations came to nothing, however, and, as 
Santa Anna was using the interval to strengthen his 
position, the armistice was terminated. On Septem- 
ber 8th, Scott defeated the enemy at Molino del Rey, 
and on the 13th stormed the heights of Chapultepec 
and entered the city. The conquest of the city 
was completed the next day, and the Mexican War 
was at an end. Both sides had fought bravely, but 
the superior training and equipment of the Americans 
made every battle a victory for the invaders. Grant 
afterwards declared that all the older officers who 
won distinction in the Civil War had served under 
Taylor or Scott. It is interesting to note that both 
Grant and Lee were of the number. 

On February 2, 1848, representatives of the two 
countries concluded the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. 

472 



TERRITORIAL SLAVERY 

Mexico ceded to the United States New Mexico and 
California, receiving therefor the sum of $15,000,000, 
together with a release from all claims against it held 
by citizens of the United States. The amoimt of 
these claims made the total purchase price about 
$18,250,000. The area of the territory acquired by 
the treaty was 523,802 square miles. A readjust- 
ment of boundaries by the "Gadsden Purchase," in 
1853, added 36,211 square miles. 

The status of slavery in the new territory had be- 
come, in the mean time, the subject of spirited and 
anxious debate in Congress. In a special message 
of August 8, 1846, President Polk asked Congress for 
$2,000,000 with which to negotiate a treaty of 
peace with Mexico. The opponents of slavery ex- 
tension were ready. The Whigs, indeed, were as 
a party neither abolitionists nor yet Free - Soilers, 
but they were practically a unit in general opposition 
to slavery. Even the Democrats, though effectual- 
ly controlled as a party by the South, had showed 
here and there some antislavery tendencies. It was 
a Democrat who took the lead. In the debate in the 
House which followed Polk's message, David Wilmot, 
a Democratic representative from Pennsylvania, 
moved to amend the bill making the appropriation 
by adding the proviso "that, as an express and fim- 
damental condition to the acquisition of any terri- 
tory from the republic of Mexico by the United 
States, by virtue of any treaty which may be ne- 
gotiated between them, and to the use by the Exec- 
utive of the moneys herein appropriated, neither 
slavery nor involuntary servitude shall ever exist in 
any part of said territory, except for crime, whereof 
the party shall first be duly convicted." Wilmot had 
31 473 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

raised the issue on which public opinion was soon 
sharply to divide. The House, where the free States 
had the majority of members, accepted the amend- 
ment, but the bill failed of consideration in the 
Senate. In February, 1847, the House again incor- 
porated the " Wilmot Proviso" in a bill appropriat- 
ing $3,000,000 for the achievement of peace, but the 
Senate, under the unexpected lead of Lewis Cass, 
of Michigan, who had been supposed to favor the 
proviso, rejected it, and the bill passed without it. 
With the discussion of the future status of California 
and New Mexico was joined the question of Terri- 
torial government for Oregon. In August, 1848, 
after a debate of some three months, Oregon was or- 
ganized as a Territory, slavery being excluded by 
incorporating in the act the antislavery provisions 
of the famous ordinance of 1787. 

There appears to have been at first no general or 
serious popular opposition to the Wilmot Proviso. 
The region in question was, of course, not included 
in the scope of the Missouri Compromise, but slavery 
had long since been abolished there by Mexican law. 
It seemed hardly necessary, therefore, to raise the 
question, or to invite controversy over a matter al- 
ready settled. It was not long, however, before pub- 
lic opinion, now for some seventeen years systemati- 
cally worked upon by the abolitionists, began to 
change. The Presidential election of 1848 was the 
first sign of divergence. Neither the Whigs nor the 
Democrats would commit themselves on the ques- 
tion. Thereupon a faction of the Democrats in New 
York, known as the "Barnburners," reinforced by 
delegates from ]\Iassachusetts, Connecticut, Ohio, 
and Wisconsin, nominated Van Buren. A few weeks 

474 



TERRITORIAL SLAVERY 

later Van Buren was again nominated by a conven- 
tion at Buffalo, composed of some three hundred 
delegates from seventeen States, on a platform which 
asserted that the history of the country showed it to 
be " the settled policy of the nation not to extend, 
nationalize, or encourage, but to limit, localize, and 
discourage slavery." The convention inscribed on 
its banner, " Free Soil, Free Speech, Free Labor, and 
Free Men." Here, at last, was a party that knew 
its own mind, and whose attitude towards slavery 
was at once definite and positive. On the nomina- 
tion of Van Buren by the Free-Soilers, the candidate 
who had been nominated by the so-called " Liberty 
party," John P. Hale, of New Hampshire, withdrew. 
The Liberty party gradually merged itself in the 
Free-Soil party, " and the more radical programme of 
abolition is replaced by the more practicable pro- 
gramme of the exclusion of slavery from the Terri- 
tories."^ The Whigs, having at the moment no 
policy worth declaring, put their trust in a soldier 
candidate. General Zachary Taylor, associating with 
him on the ticket Millard Fillmore, of New York. 
The popular vote was not large, and the success 
of the Whigs, while substantial — Taylor received 
163 electoral votes to 127 for Cass — was in no way 
particularly striking, save for the support given 
to Taylor,' himself a Southerner, by six southern 
States. 

Of far-reaching social change there were, however, 
many significant indications. The social ferment 
which in Europe culminated in the revolutions of 
1848 had, it is true, little direct connection with 

• Woodrow Wilson, Division and Reunion, 159. 
475 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

events in America, but there were not wanting even 
in this new country evidences of profound unrest and 
still more profound social transformation. It had 
become an age of railroads, steamboats, and tele- 
graphs. The wonderful growth of means of com- 
munication, by breaking down, if rudely, local and 
provincial barriers, disseminating news, and making 
ideas more quickly common property, worked every- 
where for liberty, especially in the minds of the mass- 
es. Anthracite coal, friction matches, McCormick 
reapers, sewing-machines, and daily newspapers add- 
ed to the pleasure and convenience of life, or increased 
the profitableness of labor. It was only a few years 
since the people of Rhode Island, chafing under the 
restrictions of an antiquated constitution which de- 
nied the suffrage to two-thirds of the adult males of 
the State, had broken out in rebellion against leaders 
who governed them selfishly and ill, and through the 
"Dorr War" had forced the desired reforms. At 
about the same time the anti-rent riots in New York 
put an end to the remnants of feudal privilege hith- 
erto enjoyed by the Dutch proprietors, descendants of 
the old "patroons" along the Hudson. Even more 
significant, after 1845, was the sudden increase of 
foreign immigration, stimulated particularly by dis- 
astrous potato famines in Ireland, and urged on by 
the reactionary policy which in the continental States, 
especially those of Germany, followed the failure of 
the popular risings of 1848-49. If the immigrants 
brought with them something of hatred of their na- 
tive land, they brought no less also a deep repugnance 
to slavery; and it was observed that, as they spread 
about the country, their course was west, not south. 
Many men of the South longed for a share in the 

476 



TERRITORIAL SLAVERY 

new industrial development, but slavery made it im- 
possible. Finally, a long line of distinguished writers 
and scientists — Hawthorne, Poe, Whittier, Long- 
fellow, Bancroft, Holmes, Prescott, Lowell, Story, 
Wheaton, Kent, Lieber, Audubon, Asa Gray — was 
working worthily to bring about the intellectual in- 
dependence of America, of which Emerson was the 
chief embodiment. 

All other interests were dwarfed into momentary 
insignificance, however, by the report that California 
was a land of gold. The discovery of gold, coming 
at about the same time as the treaty which ceded 
California to the United States, was followed by such 
a spontaneous movement of population as the world 
has never elsewhere seen. From all parts of the 
country, though least from the cotton-growing South, 
men flocked to the new El Dorado. Some went by 
way of the Isthmus of Panama, some by the long way 
around Cape Horn. Many made the toilsome jour- 
ney across the plains, their long trains of "prairie- 
schooners," drawn by horses or oxen, threading path- 
less wastes of unknown prairie, struggling over moun- 
tains, fighting hostile Indians, braving hunger, cold, 
and heat, hardship and death, in the eager pursuit of 
gold. A short period of lawlessness and crime fol- 
lowed, and then the better element asserted itself; 
and soon Cahfornia, though as yet with only a mill- 
tary government to represent the United States, be- 
gan building for the future. Of slavery on any terms 
its people would have nothing, nor were they in- 
clined to accept a Territorial status. In September, 
1849, a constitutional convention formed an anti- 
slavery State constitution, and before the end of the 
year a State government had been set up. On 

477 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

February 13, 1850, the constitution of the new State 
was laid before Congress by the President. Similar 
steps for the organization of State governments were 
taken by the people of New Mexico and the Mor- 
mons of Utah. 

The admission of California as a free State would 
destroy that "equilibrium of the sections" which for 
years had been the anxious concern of American 
statesmen, and in the maintenance of which some 
had seen the only hope of national safety. The solu- 
tion of the difficulty was not made easier by the fact 
that, while there was a safe Democratic majority in 
the Senate, the balance of power in the House of 
Representatives was held by a small group of Free- 
Soilers. There were other questions besides Califor- 
nia, too, involved. A part of the Texas boundary 
was in dispute, and a movement on the part of the 
United States to assert its claims had been met by 
threats of resistance. The South was angry at the 
continued demand for the abolition of slavery in the 
District of Columbia, and at the protection and aid 
increasingly extended by the North to fugitive slaves. 
Robert Toombs, of Georgia, had openly declared that 
he was "for disunion," and the sentiment was en- 
dorsed by his colleague Alexander H. Stephens. 
Since the Presidential campaign of 1848, moreover, 
the doctrine of " squatter sovereignty," with its claim 
that the people of any Territory or State should be 
allowed to decide for themselves whether or not they 
would have slavery, had been making strong head- 
way. Clay once more came forward as the great com- 
promiser. On January 29, 1850, in a series of resolu- 
tions, he had laid a basis for settlement, and on 
May 8th a select committee, of which he was chair- 

478 



TERRITORIAL SLAVERY 

man, reported two bills, "one to admit California as 
a State, to establish Territorial governments for Utah 
and New Mexico, and making proposals to Texas for 
the establishment of her western and northern boun- 
daries, and the other to suppress the slave-trade in 
the District of Columbia." The different parts of the 
"omnibus bill," as it was called, were eventually 
separated, but in September all the propositions re- 
ported by the committee became law. 

By the compromise of 1850, as finally adopted, 
two Territories, Utah and New Mexico, were or- 
ganized, with the provision that either of them, when 
admitted as a State, " shall be received into the 
Union, with or without slavery, as their constitutions 
may prescribe at the time of their admission." Cali- 
fornia was admitted as a free State. The Texas 
boundary was adjusted, $10,000,000 being paid to 
Texas in satisfaction of its claim. A stringent fugi- 
tive law replaced the old law of 1793, and the slave- 
trade, but not slavery, was abolished in the District 
of Columbia. 

The debate on the compromise measures, extend- 
ing over a period of more than eight months, trav- 
ersed in its course nearly every phase of the slavery 
question. It was clear from the beginning that the 
question of abolition was no longer directly involved, 
but that the issue lay between free soil on the one 
hand and squatter sovereignty on the other. The 
southern members in the main opposed the com- 
promise. Benton dubbed it "compromise plaster." 
Calhoun, in a great speech on March 4, 1850, in op- 
position to Clay's resolutions — a speech which his 
failing strength did not allow him to deliver, and 
which was read by Senator Mason, of Virginia — af- 

479 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

firmed that the Union was endangered by the dis- 
content of the South, and that the admission of 
California as a free State would destroy the equi- 
librium of the sections without preventing further 
agitation of the slavery question. In his view, the 
United States was a " slave - holding power," and 
throughout all its territory, particularly in that which 
had been won by common effort of the whole country, 
the South had as much right as the North. It was 
the great Southerner's last word, for before the month 
had ended he was dead. 

The most distinguished convert to the compromise 
was Webster. Webster was beyond doubt the great- 
est constitutional lawyer, the most powerful orator, 
and the most prominent statesman in American pub- 
lic life. That he seriously feared for the stability of 
the Constitution is as undoubted as that he was, in 
general, averse to the extension of slavery; but he 
was also on record as a bitter opponent of the aboli- 
tion movement, while his anxious pursuit of the 
Presidency had not served to increase the firmness 
of, his political principles. In a great speech in the 
Senate, on March 7th, he declared the Wilmot 
Proviso unnecessa^)^ Slavery was excluded from 
California and New Mexico by natural causes; no 
need, then, of a proviso "to reaffirm an ordinance 
of nature, or re-enact the will of God." On the other 
hand, while the South had just grievances against the 
North in the matter of the treatment of fugitive 
slaves, the abolition agitation, and the violence of the 
press, the North could complain that the South was 
now bent upon encouraging slavery, and violating 
State comity by imprisoning colored seamen of north- 
ern vessels when in southern ports. Of secession, 

480 




TERRITORIAL ACQUISIIIONS ( 




STxVTKS, ITi 



TERRITORIAL SLAVERY 

however, at which some southern members had hint- 
ed, and which Garrison had favored in the North, 
there was no hkelihood; "gentlemen are not serious 
when they talk of secession." 

Most of the discussion, singularly sober for a de- 
bate in which feeling and prejudice, tradition and 
habit, were so much involved, was of expediency, ad- 
justment, legal or constitutional rights, equity, good 
faith. One clear note of moral protest was heard. 
Senator William H. Seward, of New York, speaking 
for the Free-Soilers as well as for himself, opposed all 
compromise, this one in particular, and insisted that 
no compromise would avail to stay the agitation 
against slavery. The Constitution, he declared, does 
not recognize property in man, nor yet any such 
thing as an equilibrium between free States and slave. 
A "higher law" recognizes the national domain as a 
part of the common heritage of mankind, and the 
American people as the administrators of it in the 
name of the Creator. 

It was not at once seen which side had gained the 
most by the compromise. California was a free State, 
and with its admission the balance between the sec- 
tions in the Senate had been destroyed, never to be 
restored. On the other hand, the application of 
"squatter sovereignty" to New Mexico and Utah 
left those Territories at liberty to become slave States 
if they chose ; and it was clear that the decision would 
be, in the main, a matter of climate. The painful 
features of the slave -market would no longer thrust 
themselves before members of Congress on their w^ay 
to and from the capitol building at Washington. So 
far the greater immediate gain appeared to accrue to 
the North. Two things only had the South, still 

481 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

dominant in the national councils, won: a postpone- 
ment of the final decision about slavery, and a dread- 
fully efficient fugitive-slave law. The first gave but 
a brief breathing space, while the second unwittingly 
heartened the North for war. 



XXI 

THE PRELUDE TO THE CIVIL WAR 

THERE were not wanting those who looked upon 
the compromise of 1850 as a final adjustment 
of the slavery controversy. Troublesome as the 
question had been, it had now, it was thought, been 
settled, and settled on principle. So long as slavery 
was not to be abolished as a moral evil, what better 
or fairer adjustment could there be than to let each 
new State, as it came into the Union, decide for 
itself whether its labor should be slave or free? So 
thought many. Webster went about the country 
defending the arrangement, albeit speaking of his op- 
ponents with a bitterness which was not his wont. 
Eight hundred leading men of Boston and vicinity, 
among them George Ticknor, Rufus Choate, William 
H. Prescott, and Jared Sparks, signed an address ap- 
proving the doctrine of his seventh-of-March speech, 
and enthusiastic admirers cancelled his notes and 
gave him presents of money. But Webster's work 
was nearly done. The blow which his defence of the 
fugitive-slave act gave to the antislavery cause re- 
coiled speedily upon his own head. He lived long 
enough to be dethroned by the New England which 
had looked up to him as to a god, to be repudiated 
by those whose political convictions he had done 
much to form, and to be denounced as an apostate 

483 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

and a renegade by those to whom human freedom 
and not poHtical expediency had become the one 
great issue. The condemnation was harsh and ex- 
treme, and took Httle account of the legal and con- 
stitutional soundness of much of his argument, but 
under its crushing weight Webster sank rapidly. In 
July, 1850, before the debate on the compromise 
measures was over, the death of President Taylor, 
and the succession of Vice-president Fillmore, gave 
Webster once more the office of Secretary of State; 
and he was still secretary when, on October 24, 
1852, he died. History has been kind to him, for 
while it cannot overlook the clouded evening of 
his momentous life, it thinks most of the long and 
brilliant day, when the greatest of American states- 
men used with consummate power his splendid en- 
dowments of intellect, voice, and presence for the 
maintenance of liberty and union, and the establish- 
ment of the Constitution as the supreme law of the 
land. 

Two diplomatic matters only of special importance 
developed during Webster's last term as Secretary 
of State. The first was connected with the revolu- 
tion of 1848 in Hungary, and the popular demand in 
this country for the recognition of Hungarian in- 
dependence. Complaint by Hiilsemann, the Austrian 
charge d'affaires at Washington, of the action of the 
United States in sending an agent to Hungary to 
investigate the conditions there, called out the fa- 
mous "Hiilsemann letter," in which Webster sharply 
rebuked the Austrian representative and brilliantly 
vindicated, though in language needlessly direct and 
emphatic, the course of this government. Later, 
when Kossuth and other Hungarian refugees were 

484 



THE PR"ELUDE TO THE CIVIL WAR 

brought to the United States in an American war 
vessel, their enthusiastic reception again threatened 
a breach with Austria, but Webster succeeded in 
maintaining friendly relations between the two gov- 
ernments, while at the same time expressing his per- 
sonal sympathy for Kossuth and his cause. So far 
as recognition or financial aid was concerned, Kos- 
suth's mission, like the movement for Hungarian in- 
dependence of which he had been the leader, was a 
failure. 

The other episode grew out of the Clayton- Bui wer 
treaty of 1850. By this treaty the United States and 
Great Britain had declared that neither government 
would ever obtain or assert any exclusive control over 
any ship-canal that might be constructed through 
Nicaragua or any other part of Central America, but 
would guarantee its neutrality, to the end that the 
canal might always be free and open to the commerce 
of all nations. The treaty led to a long correspond- 
ence with Great Britain over the claim of the latter 
to levy port charges on the so-called Mosquito coast 
in Nicaragua, and to a controversy with Mexico re- 
garding the right of way across Tehuantepec, both 
of which questions were satisfactorily settled. Simi- 
lar success attended the adjustment of difficulties 
which followed the fitting out of filibustering ex- 
peditions against Cuba, and an attack by a mob on 
the Spanish consulate at New Orleans. 

All other issues were relegated to second place, 
however, by the increasing excitement which attend- 
ed the enforcement of the fugitive-slave law in the 
North. The terms of the act were of the utmost 
stringency. The act authorized the owner of any 
fugitive slave, or his agent or representative, to pur- 

485 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

sue the fugitive into any State or Territory, arrest 
him, and have the captor's claim to ownership im- 
mediately examined by the courts or by commission- 
ers especially appointed for the purpose. The testi- 
mony of the negro could not be received as evidence 
in any trial or hearing. Any person aiding in the 
rescue or escape of a fugitive slave, or interfering 
with the custody of him by his alleged owner, was 
liable to a fine of $1000, or imprisonment for six 
months, and to the forfeiture of the further sum of 
$1000 "by way of civil damages to the party injured 
by such illegal conduct." Officers charged with the 
custody or return of fugitives were authorized to em- 
ploy such aid as might be necessary to enable them 
to perform the service. In short, the act was so con- 
trived as, naturally, to throw all the presumption on 
the side of the owner or his agent, while at the same 
time placing at his disposal, for the enforcement of 
his claim, the whole physical power of the com- 
munity. 

Wide-spread opposition was not long in showing 
itself. The pulpit, long silent, began to speak out, 
and public meetings both voiced and nourished the 
popular feeling that the law, however constitutional, 
was cruel and unjust. Slave-owners and their agents, 
the latter often men of brutal instincts and coarse 
manners, found the pursuit and apprehension of 
fugitive negroes increasingly difficult and dangerous. 
In September, 1851, one Gorsuch, a Baltimore physi- 
cian, was shot and killed in Lancaster County, Penn- 
sylvania, by a party of armed negroes while attempt- 
ing to carry off a fugitive slave; and, although more 
than thirty persons were arrested, none could be con- 
victed. In Syracuse, New York, a negro named Jerry 

486 



THE PRELUDE TO THE CIVIL WAR 

Mc Henry, held in jail for trial under the law, was 
rescued by a party headed by Gerrit Smith, a promi- 
nent abolitionist and later a member of Congress, 
and Rev. Samuel J. May, and was aided in making 
his escape to Canada. A raid upon a settlement of 
fugitives in Michigan by an armed party from Ken- 
tucky was forcibly resisted, the Kentuckians being 
arrested and put on trial for kidnapping, and, al- 
though all were acquitted, their purpose was foiled. 
These were but a few instances out of many. There 
were, of course, successful attempts to recover run- 
aways under the law, but in most such instances the 
expense incurred was ruinous. The most famous 
case, perhaps, was that of Anthony Burns, who was 
held in Boston in spite of an attempt to rescue him, 
and after a trial before the United States commission- 
er was remanded to his captors, and escorted to a 
revenue-cutter in the harbor through streets guarded 
by I loo troops and the entire police force of the city. 
Well might the Richmond Enquirer say, "A few more 
such victories and the South is undone." 

These were the violent outbursts on the surface. 
A secret but more effectual nullification of the ob- 
noxious law was worked by the ' ' underground rail- 
road." Throughout the North there had for years 
been many persons, white and colored, who did not 
hesitate to aid fleeing negroes in their dangerous 
progress from the border States to Canada. The 
fugitive - slave law hardened this desultory aid into 
something resembling a system. Various "routes," 
or "lines," with "stations" at convenient distances, 
speedily developed under the energetic, but secret, 
agitation of radical antislavery advocates. Houses, 
barns, sheds, and thickets served as shelters where 

487 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

the fugitives were fed and cared for until opportunity 
offered to convoy them, usually at night, on the next 
stage of their journey. The location of the stations 
could easily be ascertained by the negro, and a fugi- 
tive who succeeded in reaching one of them was 
pretty sure of accomplishing the remainder of his 
journey in safety. It is improbable that there was 
in this movement anything resembling a formal or- 
ganization, but those who participated in it were, as 
a rule, well enough known in their communities, and 
often, as in the case of Levi Coffin (a merchant of 
Newport, Indiana), of high standing in business or 
professional life. The work had all the fascination 
of unlawful and secret enterprise, and its dangers as 
well, for fine and imprisonment were heavily meted 
out to such "agents" as were from time to time de- 
tected; but neither danger nor punishment could 
avail to stop a work which seemed to most of those 
engaged in it purely a work of humanity. 

Like all such secret enterprises, the "underground 
railroad" obtained, in the popular mind, an importance 
greater than its achievements warranted. The number 
of slaves who succeeded in making good their escape 
either to Canada or to the free States is unknown, 
but contemporary popular estimates, both northern 
and southern, were doubtless greatly exaggerated. 
According to the United States census of i860, only 
loii slaves escaped from their masters in 1850, and 
in i860 this total had fallen to 803, or about one- 
thirtieth of one per cent, of the entire slave popula- 
tion. A southern Congressman, Clingman, on the 
other hand, estimated the number of fugitives in the 
North at thirty thousand, and their value at fifteen 
million dollars. It was the growing volume of op- 



THE PRELUDE TO THE CIVIL WAR 

position to a system which could place in the statute 
book such a law as the fugitive-slave act, and not 
the number of breaches of that law, that constituted 
the gravest menace to slavery and slave property. 

Then, in 1852, came the publication of Uncle 
Tom's Cabin. In no sense a great literary perform- 
ance, nor yet an accurate picture of the average life 
of the slave, the simple pathos of Mrs. Stowe's nar- 
rative, appealing to a public mind long wrought upon 
by the slavery agitation, made a profound impres- 
sion. The success of the book was prodigious. Three 
thousand copies were sold on the day of publication, 
three hundred thousand within a year. It was trans- 
lated into many foreign languages, and is still, not- 
withstanding the disappearance of the issues which 
gave it birth, a widely popular book. Of all the 
blows which slavery received, none was so great as 
that delivered by this tale of "life among the lowly." 
Of course it was denounced as slanderous and un- 
true, a gross misrepresentation of facts; and while 
the story doubtless dwells upon what was possible 
rather than upon what was of everyday occurrence, 
the publication of the "Key" showed sufficient his- 
torical ground for the details of the picture. Thou- 
sands of youths who wept over the story in 1852 were 
voters in 1856 and i860, and they did not forget the 
book which had stirred them as, perhaps, no other 
book ever stirred any people anywhere. 

It was, indeed, a curious spectacle which the 
United States for a few years presented. The section 
which, twenty years before, had vigorously applaud- 
ed Jackson's stand against nullification was now it- 
self virtually nullifying a federal statute, and deny- 
ing to the South the benefits of a law which at least 
32 489 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

had been validly enacted; and there was no Jackson 
to say them nay. Nor were connivance and mob 
violence the only methods of resistance employed. 
Before i860 nearly every northern State had passed 
some kind of "personal liberty" law for the special 
protection of fugitive slaves. Some of these laws 
granted to the alleged fugitives the right of jury 
trial, some the privilege of testifying in their own be- 
half, while others forbade State officers to aid in the 
enforcement of federal statutes. In the face of the 
deepening resentment of the North at the aggressive 
championship of slavery by the South, questions of 
constitutionality, consistency, and State comity were 
not regarded. Few denied that the fugitive - slave 
act was good law, but fewer still believed that the 
law itself was good. 

The effects of the compromise measures of 1850 on 
the Presidential campaign of 1852 were marked. 
While the Whigs lost the support of the Free-Soil and 
abolition vote, the Democrats, generally accepting 
the compromise settlement, became once more a 
united party. The most prominent Democratic com- 
petitor for the nomination was Cass, but there was 
early fear of another "dark horse." For the Whigs 
to nominate Webster would be to alienate a large 
section of the party which had already repudiated 
Fillmore; and General Scott, whose opinion of the 
compromise was unknown, began to be favorably 
mentioned. In each case the expected happened. 
The Democratic convention at Baltimore, on the 
forty-ninth ballot, nominated Franklin Pierce, of 
New Hampshire, with William R. King, of Alabama, 
as candidate for Vice-president. A few days later, 
in the same city, the Whigs after fifty-three ballots 

490 



THE PRELUDE TO THE CIVIL WAR 

nominated Scott, the candidate for Vice-president 
being William A. Graham, of North Carolina. The 
platforms of both parties approved the compromise 
measures, including by express mention the fugitive- 
slave law, pledged the party to the strict enforce- 
ment of the acts, and deprecated further agitation 
of the slavery question. A new party, the Free-Soil 
Democrats, nominated for President John P. Hale, 
of New Hampshire, on a platform which denounced 
slavery as " a sin against God and a crime against 
man," and demanded the "immediate and total re- 
peal" of the f ugitive - slave law. The uneventful 
campaign which followed ended in overwhelming de- 
feat for the Whigs. Pierce and King received 254 
electoral votes to 42 for Scott and Graham, while 
the popular vote for the Democratic candidates show- 
ed a majority of 158,227 over the combined opposi- 
tion. 

" I fervently hope that the question is at rest, and 
that no sectional or ambitious or fanatical excite- 
ment may again threaten the durability of our in- 
stitutions or obscure the light of our prosperty." 
So spoke President Pierce in his inaugural address, 
March 4, 1853. If such were really the confident 
hope of the President, he was sadly deceived, for his 
administration was hardly launched before the storm 
once more broke. On December 14, 1853, nine 
days after the meeting of the Thirty-third Congress, 
Senator Dodge, of Iowa, introduced a bill to organ- 
ize the Territory of Nebraska. It was not the first 
time that such a proposition had been made. The 
vast region between 36° 30' and 49° on the south 
and north and the Missouri River and the Rocky 
Mountains on the east and west, was unorganized pub- 

491 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

lie domain. It had been traversed by several ex- 
ploring parties, was inhabited by wandering triVjes 
of Indians, and was popularly supposed to be a desert. 
The emigrants who had struggled across it on their 
way to California and Oregon had seen little in it to 
attract them. Since 1844, however, the question of 
organizing some part of the country as a Territory 
had been more or less regularly before Congress, and 
a bill for the purpose passed the House in February, 

1853- 

On January 4, 1854, vStephen A. Douglas, of Illi- 
nois, chairman of the Senate Committee on Terri- 
tories, reported a substitute for Dodge's bill, ex- 
tending to the proposed Territory the provisi(3ns 
regarding slavery which had been incorporated in the 
New Mexico and Utah acts of 1850. This was a sud- 
den raising again of the slavery question, for which 
neither the South nor the North was prepared. As 
it was becoming clear that neither New Mexico nor 
Utah was likely to have slavery, the provision of 
Douglas's bill was unsatisfactory to the South, while 
the strong Free - Soil sentiment in the free States 
made it equally unacceptable to the North. Dixon, 
of Kentucky, a Democrat, immediately proposed an 
amendment exempting the new Territory from the 
operation of the Missouri Compromise, to which 
Charles Sumner, of Massachusetts, a Free-Soiler, re- 
plied with an amendment extending the Missouri 
Compromise to the Territory. Douglas shortly sub- 
mitted further amendments to the bill of the com- 
mittee, "changing the southern boundary from 36° 
30' to 37°, providing for two territories instead of 
one, and declaring the Missouri Compromise inopera- 
tive in the new territories, on the ground that it had 

492 



THE PRELUDE TO THE CIVIL WAR 

been superseded by the compromise measures of 
1850." * On February 6th a further amendment 
declared the Missouri Compromise to be "incon- 
sistent" with the legislation of 1850, while on the 
next day the Missouri Compromise was declared "in- 
operative and void" because "inconsistent with the 
principle of non-intervention by Congress with sla- 
very in the States and Territories" as recognized by 
the legislation of 1850, " it being the true intent and 
meaning of this act not to legislate slavery into any 
Territory or State, nor to exclude it therefrom, but 
to leave the people thereof perfectly free to form and 
regulate their domestic institutions in their own way, 
subject only to the Constitution of the United States." 
In this form the bill, on March 4th, passed the 
Senate. 

The House, meanwhile, had had under considera- 
tion a similar bill, reported by Richardson, of Illi- 
nois, on January 31st. Although this bill did not 
come formally before the House until ]\Iay 8th, one 
or other of the two bills, and the general subject 
to which they related, were discussed almost daily 
from the middle of February to the last of April. 
On March 21st the Senate bill was set aside, and 
on May 2 2d the House bill, substantially identical 
with the bill of the Senate, passed. Four days later 
the Senate, under the lead of Douglas, passed the bill 
without a division, and on the 30th it received the 
approval of the President. 

The debate which attended the Kansas-Nebraska 
bill is without parallel in the history of Congress. 
Almost every phase of the slavery question was dis- 

* Mac Donald, 5c/<?c/ Documents, 396. The northern boundary- 
was 43° 30'. 

493 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

i 

cussed, often at great length, the debate forming, in 
this respect, an epitome of the history of the subject. 
Principally, however, discussion centred around the 
doctrines of "popular sovereignty" and the constitu- 
tional right to restrict slavery in a Territory. There 
was intense opposition. Three thousand New Eng- 
land ministers signed a petition against the bill, and 
Sumner, Chase, Benton, Wade, and Giddings de- 
nounced it in unmeasured terms. The majority of 
southern members were at first indifferent, but a 
small group, popularly known as "fire-eaters," went 
further than Douglas and demanded the omission of 
the popular sovereignty provision. As the debate 
went on it was marked by increasing violence, with 
frequent recrimination and personal attack. Douglas, 
famiUarly called the " little giant," was easily the in- 
tellectual leader of the Democrats, and he forced the 
original measure through the Senate with a brutal 
strength and vigor which often accorded ill with the 
dignity of a great deliberative assembly. There has 
been much speculation as to his reasons for thus tear- 
ing open again the slavery question. He doubtless 
believed sincerely in the principle ahd expediency of 
the bill, and he may have fancied that its success 
would win for him the coveted Presidential chair. 
For the moment, however, he became, in the minds 
of antislavery men, the living embodiment of brute 
force in the policy of slavery extension. Legislatures 
and mass - meetings throughout the North passed 
resolutions condemning the measure, and indignant 
citizens in Ohio and Massachusetts burned or hanged 
its author in effigy; but to no purpose. Little did 
Douglas foresee, however, the storm he had raised. 
As the members of the Senate left the Capitol in the 

494 



THE PRELUDE TO THE CIVIL WAR 

early morning of March 4th, after an all-night session, 
Chase said to Sumner, referring to the boom of can- 
non from the navy-yard, "They celebrate a present 
victory, but the echoes they awake will never rest 
until slavery itself shall die." * 

With the passage of the Kansas- Nebraska act the 
political history of slavery in the United States en- 
tered upon its final stage. The era of compromise 
gave way to the era of local option. If the South 
failed here, there apparently remained to it only the 
dark alternative of submission or war. 

It was soon seen that there would be no slavery 
in Nebraska. Kansas, however, presented in its 
eastern portion the same climatic conditions as west- 
ern Missouri; and as the fifty thousand slaves in 
Missouri were estimated, for the purposes of southern 
argimient, to be worth twenty-five million dollars, 
the control of Kansas was a prize worth fighting for. 
The South was first in the field. Within a month 
from the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska act, a con- 
siderable nurnber of Missourians had moved across 
the border and taken possession of some of the best 
land. Before long they were joined by recruits from 
other slave States, strong efforts being made to in- 
duce emigration. It w^as observed, however, that 
most of those who came were yoimg men without 
family or property ties, eager for adventure rather 
than for colonization, and that few brought their 
slaves. The North, on the other hand, accepting in 
good faith the unwelcome situation, set itself serious- 
ly to the task of making Kansas a free State by es- 
tablishing in the Territory a preponderant population 

• Rhodes, United States, I., 476. 
495 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

of free-State men and women. Under the lead of the 
New England Emigrant Aid Society, formed at Wor- 
cester by Eli Thayer and others, and of similar asso- 
ciations elsewhere, the organization and equipment 
of emigrant parties was zealously entered upon, and 
thousands of free-State settlers were soon wending 
their way to Kansas. When, a httle later, the Mis- 
sourians declared a blockade of the Missouri River, 
the emigrants took the overland route through Iowa 
and Nebraska. 

The two factions were soon in colHsion. The elec- 
tion for the choice of a Territorial delegate, in Novem- 
ber, 1854, was carried by fraud, organized bands of 
Missouri "border ruffians" taking possession of the 
polls and furnishing the requisite majority for Whit- 
field, the proslavery candidate. The same outrage 
was shortly repeated. On the morning of March 
30, 1855, the day appointed for the election of 
members of the first Territorial legislature, there ap- 
peared in eastern Kansas "an unkempt, sundried, 
blatant, picturesque mob of five thousand men with 
guns upon their shoulders, revolvers stuffing their 
belts, bowie-knives protruding from their boot-tops, 
and generous rations of whiskey in their wagons."* 
The intruders took possession of most of the polling 
places and furnished more than three-fourths of the 
sixty- three hundred votes returned. The legislature 
thus elected met at Pawnee in July, adopted the 
Missouri code of laws en bloc for the new Territory, 
with the addition of stringent provisions for the pro- 
tection of slavery, and drew up a State constitution. 
In September the Free- State party, whose represent- 

• Spring, Kansas, 44. 
496 



THE PRELUDE TO THE CIVIL WAR 

atives had found it expedient to withdraw from the 
Pawnee legislature, held a convention at Topeka, 
repudiated the Pawnee legislature and its acts, or- 
dered another election for delegate to Congress, 
draughted a free-State constitution, and in January, 
1856, elected Free-State officers. Kansas thus had 
two rival governments, one depending for support 
on the "border ruffians," the other representing the 
majority of the bona -fide settlers in the Territory, 
Open war, with its attendant incidents of murder, 
arson, and pillage, speedily followed. On May 21, 
1856, an armed mob of proslavery men, led by a 
United States deputy marshal and a county sheriff, 
visited Lawrence, the headquarters of the Free-State 
party, burned the hotel, and sacked the town. 

In Congress, as well as in the country, " bleeding 
Kansas" was the absorbing issue. The party com- 
plexion of the Thirty-fourth Congress, which met in 
December, 1855, was at first hopelessly confused. In 
the House, where the "Anti-Nebraska men," made 
up principally of Whigs who had repudiated the 
Kansas-Nebraska act, had a majority, a select com- 
mittee appointed to investigate the troubles in Kan- 
sas reported, July i, 1856, by a majority vote, that 
each election thus far held in the Territory had been 
"carried by organized invasion from the State of 
Missouri," that "the alleged Territorial legislature 
was an illegally constituted body, and that "in the 
present condition of the Territory a fair election can- 
not be held without a new census, a stringent and 
well-guarded election law, the selection of impartial 
judges, and the presence of United States troops at 
every place of election." Such, however, was not 
the view taken by President Pierce. In a special 

497 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

message to Congress on January 24th, the pro- 
slavery legislature was endorsed, and the attempt 
of the Free-State party to form a State government 
denounced as revolutionary. Troops were shortly 
placed at the disposal of Shannon, the proslavery 
governor, to maintain order. Pierce, with all his 
assumption of high moral tone, could see nothing in 
the Kansas troubles save the bare legal issue of obe- 
dience to law, and chose to busy himself with legal 
quibbles rather than to act a more decisive part. A 
bill to admit Kansas as a State under the Topeka con- 
stitution was passed by the House but rejected by 
the Senate, and the legislature which attempted to 
meet under the constitution was dispersed by United 
States troops. Thanks to the soldiers, who per- 
formed their unwelcome duty with much discretion, 
the President was able to inform Congress in Decem- 
ber, 1856, that tranquillity had been restored; but he 
failed to point out that it was an armed peace, and 
his review of the situation was so contrived as to 
place the chief responsibility for the disorders upon 
the North. 

No further effort for statehood was made until Sep- 
tember, 1857, when a convention at Lecompton drew 
up a proslavery constitution, which was adopted in 
December by a large majority. Two weeks later, 
however, the Free-State party, which had got control 
of the legislature, resubmitted the constitution, with 
the result that it was rejected by a majority of over 
ten thousand. An attempt to force Kansas into the 
Union with this rejected constitution failed. A third 
constitution prohibiting slavery was ratified by popu- 
lar vote in October, 1859, but it was not until January 
29, 1 861 , that Kansas was numbered among the States. 

498 



THE PRELUDE TO THE CIVIL WAR 

In Congress the violence of controversy reached its 
climax in the assault on Charles Sumner. Sumner 
had been chosen Senator from Massachusetts shortly 
after Webster became Secretary of State under Fill- 
more. Handsome, accomplished, an eloquent speak- 
er and easy writer, enjoying a wide acquaintance at 
home and abroad, Sumner had early become one of 
the most prominent leaders of the antislavery forces. 
Splendid as was his oratorical power, however, he 
did not scruple to indulge freely in personalities in de- 
bate, and the resentment of those who suffered at his 
hands was deepened to anger as, with the growing 
excitement over the Kansas troubles, his attacks upon 
the South became more vehement. In a speech on 
the "Crime against Kansas," May 19 and 20, 1856, 
Sumner spoke with unusual severity of several south- 
ern leaders, including Senator Butler, of South Caro- 
lina. For this he was assaulted in his seat, after the 
adjournment of the Senate, by Preston S. Brooks, a 
Representative from South Carolina and a nephew 
of Butler, and beaten about the head and shoulders 
with a loaded cane until he became insensible. Sum- 
ner's injuries were so serious that it was not until the 
end of 1859 that he was able to resume his seat. 
Brooks was censured by the House and resigned, but 
was at once re-elected by his constituents. The South 
did not approve, but neither did it condemn. The 
protest of Massachusetts was silent but telling: Sum- 
ner's chair was left vacant until such time as he 
should again be able to fill it. 

It was inevitable that slavery should dominate 
the Presidential election of 1856. The party situa- 
tion was extraordinarily complicated. The com- 
promise of 1850 and the Kansas-Nebraska act had 

499 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

split both the Democratic and the Whig parties along 
sectional lines. Although Douglas's doctrine of " pop- 
ular sovereignty" was accepted by the Democratic 
party, many northern Democrats rejected it. The 
control of the party, however, was still in the hands 
of the South." The Whig party, unable to take 
ground against slavery, sought peace in declaring the 
issue settled; and with that declaration it shortly 
found its grave, dying, as was said, of an effort to 
swallow the fugitive-slave law. In neither camp was 
there place for the rapidly growing number of Free- 
Soil and antislavery men. Then came the Native 
American, or " Know-Nothing, " party, with its secret, 
oath-bound organization, its demand, not even then 
new in our history, of "America for Americans," and 
its ill-concealed antagonism to the Roman Catholic 
Church. Many antislavery Whigs and Democrats 
joined the " Know-Nothings," and the success of the 
party in State elections, particularly in the East and 
South, was for a time extraordinary. What was 
wanted was a party which, standing firmly against 
further extension of slavery, should champion against 
the Democrats a loose construction of the Constitu- 
tion, under which alone slavery could be excluded 
from the Territories. The need was met in the Re- 
publican party, organized in the West and forming 
the legitimate successor of the Anti- Nebraska or- 
ganization. The growth of the party had been re- 
markable. " It got its programme from the Free- 
Soilers, whom it bodily absorbed; its radical and 
aggressive spirit from the abolitionists, whom it re- 
ceived without liking; its liberal views upon consti- 
tutional questions from the Whigs, who constituted 
both in numbers and in influence its commanding 

500 




ABRAHAM LINCOLN 



THE PRELUDE TO THE CIVIL WAR 

element ; and its popular impulse from the Democrats, 
who did not leave behind them, when they joined it, 
their faith in their old party ideals." * 

The Democrats nominated James Buchanan, of 
Pennsylvania, late Minister to Great Britain, for Presi- 
dent, and John C. Breckinridge, of Kentucky, for 
Vice-president. The platform reaffirmed the strict- 
construction principles of the party, championed 
popular sovereignty and the Kansas-Nebraska act, 
and defended the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. 
The Know-Nothings condemned the sectionalism of 
the Democrats as shown in the repeal of the Missouri 
Compromise, and nominated ex-President Fillmore, 
whereupon the antislavery delegates withdrew and 
nominated Fremont, of California, whose political 
career had been too brief to be condemned. Fill- 
more's nomination was shortly endorsed by a Whig 
convention at Baltimore, on a platform which de- 
nounced "geographical parties." The Republicans 
met at Philadelphia and unanimously nominated 
Fremont, already the nominee of the seceding Native 
Americans, and William L. Dayton, of New Jersey. 
The platform spoke with the positiveness of youth. 
It denied the authority of Congress or of a Territorial 
legislature to establish slavery in any Territory, de- 
nounced the conduct of the administration in regard 
to Kansas, and demanded the immediate admission 
of Kansas as a free State. The campaign on the Re- 
publican side recalled, in its political clubs, torch- 
light processions, and great public meetings, the 
famous " log-cabin and hard cider" campaign of 1840 ; 
but the Republicans were not 3^et well enough or- 

• Wilson, Division and Reunion, 1S8. 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

ganized to win in the country at large. Buchanan 
and Breckinridge received 174 out of a total of 296 
electoral votes, and a plurality of nearly five hundred 
thousand votes as against Fremont, the Republican 
candidate. There was no longer either a Whig or a 
Native American party. But the Republicans had 
polled 1,341,264 votes, a phenomenal success for a 
new party in its first campaign. Might it not, four 
years later, carry the country? 

On March 6, 1857, two days after the inaugura- 
tion of President Buchanan, the Supreme Court 
of the United States rendered its decision in the 
famous Dred Scott case. Dred Scott was a negro 
slave who had accompanied his owner, an army sur- 
geon, to Illinois, and thence to Fort Snelling, west of 
the Mississippi and north of 36° 30', being held as a 
slave during his residence in both these regions. In 
1847, Scott, who had been brought back to Missouri, 
brought suit in the courts of that State to recover 
his freedom on the ground of his residence in free ter- 
ritory; but the case was lost. In 1853, Scott having 
in the mean time passed under the control of one 
Sandford, of New York, a second suit was brought, 
this time in the United States Circuit Court, which 
by appeal finally reached the Supreme Court of the 
United States, where its importance caused it to be 
twice argued. The main question which the court 
was called upon to decide was whether or not a negro, 
the descendant of African slaves, could become a 
citizen of the United States, and as such be entitled 
to sue in a United States court. Chief -justice Taney, 
in the opinion of the court, held that he could not; 
that negroes such as Scott were not included, and 
were not intended to be included, under the term 

502 



THE PRELUDE TO THE CIVIL WAR 

" citizens" in the Constitution, but were looked upon, 
at t!ie time of the adoption of the Constitution, "as 
a subordinate and inferior class of beings" who had 
been subjugated by the dominant race, and "whether 
emancipated or not, yet remained subject to their 
authority, and had no rights or privileges but such 
as those who held the power and the government 
might choose to grant them." The 'Supreme Court, 
accordingly, could take no jurisdiction of the case. 

Here the court, having decided the only question 
before it, should have stopped. Taney, however, 
felt that the occasion had at last offered for settling 
once for all, by solemn decision of the highest tribunal 
in the land, the vexed question of slavery in the Ter- 
ritories. He accordingly proceeded to inquire wheth- 
er, in case Scott could have sued as a citizen, the 
fact of his residence in free territory would have en- 
titled him to his freedom. Here again the decision 
was against him, the court holding that since slaves 
were property under the Constitution, the Missouri 
Compromise, which excluded this kind of property 
from so much of the Louisiana purchase as lay north 
of 36° 30', was an unwarranted interference with the 
property rights of the citizen, and therefore uncon- 
stitutional and void. 

No judicial decision ever so profoundly stirred the 
public mind as the decision of the Supreme Court in 
the case of Dred Scott. Whatever its legal soundness 
or binding force, it was at once seen to strike at the 
very foundation of the constitutional opposition to 
slavery extension ; and while the South hailed it with 
applause as opening all the Territories to slavery, 
the antislavery North for the same reason repudiated 
it. The court was not a unit, however. Justice 

503 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

Curtis, in a masterly dissenting opinion, exposed the 
illogical character of Taney's argument, and showed 
by irrefutable historical facts that free negroes, hav- 
ing been recognized as citizens by a number of the 
States at the time the Constitution was framed, be- 
came by that fact citizens of the United States also. 
Curtis's opinion, unquestionably the better law, was 
enthusiastically commended and widely circulated 
in the North. But the decision only widened the 
more the gulf between the sections. It had more than 
once been seriously proposed in Congress to dispose 
of the slavery controversy by referring it to the 
Supreme Court, as though a question of morals or 
politics could ever be finally determined simply by 
legal means. Now that the method had been tried, 
the refusal of a majority of the people to accept the 
result showed how futile was the hope of settlement 
through such a channel. 

There was no further serious attempt to settle the 
status of slavery in the United States by law. There 
are difficulties which law cannot adjust, and from the 
time of the Dred Scott decision " the course of events 
tends, with increasing rapidity, to a settlement by 
force." ^ Congress busied itself, indeed, about other 
matters. It spent much time in discussing bills 
granting homesteads to settlers on the public domain 
and setting aside lands for the support of public 
schools. In 1858 Minnesota became a State, in 1859 
Oregon, For the most part, however, it talked about 
slavery, with events in Kansas as a text. Presi- 
dent and Senate united, without avail, to force upon 
Kansas the Lecompton constitution. A House in- 

• Johnston, American Politics, i8i. 
504 



THE PRELUDE TO THE CIVIL WAR 

vestigating committee charged the President with 
bribing members of Congress and certain editors to 
support the Lecompton bill, a charge which the sup- 
porters of the administration vigorously denied. In 
Illinois a series of debates between Douglas and 
Abraham Lincoln, both candidates for a Senatorship, 
over slavery and the Dred Scott case, attracted wide 
attention even in the East, and marked Lincoln as 
an able exponent of Republican doctrine. There was 
talk among southern members of reopening the 
African slave-trade, although the trade had continued, 
since its formal prohibition in 1808, with little actual 
interruption. There was talk, too, of secession, but 
only in the South was the suggestion taken seriously 
to heart. 

On the morning of October 18, 1859, the news- 
papers startled the country with the report of a 
midnight attack on the United States arsenal at 
Harper's Ferry, Virginia, by a small band of whites 
and negroes led by John Brown. Brown had already 
won notoriety in Kansas as the most radical opponent 
of slavery among the free-State settlers. The wanton 
killing of five free-State men by the border ruffians 
had been terribly avenged by the killing, under 
Brown's direction, of an equal number of proslavery 
squatters on Pottawatomie Creek. Now, with the 
help of friends in the North, hardly any of whom, 
however, knew his precise purpose, he had gathered 
near Harper's Ferry a company of eighteen persons, 
had seized the arsenal, and had kept up a stout re- 
sistance until the arrival of a body of marines from 
the navy -yard at Washington, under command of 
Colonel Robert E. Lee, when he was quickly overpow- 
ered. For the moment a panic of fear seized upon 

505 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

the South, where slave insurrection was of all things 
most to be dreaded ; but careful investigation failed 
to connect the raid with anything which could be 
justly called a conspiracy at the North. On De- 
cember 2d Brown was hanged, under the laws of 
Virginia, for treason, conspiracy, and murder. John 
Brown was a fanatic, narrow, intense, bigoted, but 
with a certain nobility of character which deeply 
impressed those who knew him, and a calm persist- 
ency which knew no fear and stopped at no difficulty. 
He was convinced that slavery must be attacked by 
force, and that he was divinely commissioned to lead 
the onslaught. In the history of the struggle for free- 
dom, his ill-starred expedition stands alone, and 
Brown himself throughout his life had but a limited 
connection with those whose ultimate aim was the 
same as his. He did not precipitate the Civil War, 
nor yet open to the negro the path to freedom. The 
law could do no less than adjudge him worthy of 
death; but time, which both clears and softens the 
judgments of men, holds him rather as a voice crying 
in the wilderness, a prophet denouncing wrath upon 
his enemies while heralding the approach of a new 
day. 

The Harper's Ferry episode was only the most spec- 
tacular of the events which, throughout Buchanan's 
term, indicated the near approach of a crisis. The tech- 
nical legal right of the South, under the Dred Scott 
decision, to protection for its "peculiar institution" 
was, indeed, unassailable, but it was in fact set at 
naught by the deepening moral hostility of the North 
to slavery and all its works. Neither side tried fur- 
ther to understand the other, neither side any longer 
seriously believed in the possibility of compromise. 

506 



THE PRELUDE TO THE CIVIL WAR 

There were no new facts to adduce, no new argu- 
ments to urge. Buchanan, estimable in personal 
character, grew daily more helpless in the hands of 
the slavery advocates; while Douglas, though no 
opponent of slavery, broke with the administration 
when it tried to force upon Kansas the Lecompton 
constitution, and thereby split wide open the Demo- 
cratic party, whose stronghold was in the South. The 
northern Whigs, the Native Americans, and the 
Douglas Democrats, agreeing only in love for the 
Union and dread of war, hoped still for a peaceful 
settlement. Only the Republicans, young and ag- 
gressive, knew their own minds, but even they hesi- 
tated to take pronounced groimd or to rest their ap- 
peal to the voters on the slavery issue alone. Plain 
as the issue of war seems to us, it was not plain to 
the men of i860. Not even the most radical op- 
ponents of the slave power could easily bring them- 
selves to think of war as possible. 

The Democrats met in national convention at 
Charleston in April, i860. The refusal of the conven- 
tion to adopt a resolution pledging the party to " abide 
by the decisions of the Supreme Court of the United 
States on the question of constitutional law" — a 
political doctrine now for the first time championed 
by the slave-holding Democrats — was followed by 
the withdrawal of most of the southern members. 
After fifty-seven ballots had been taken without the 
choice of a candidate for President, the convention 
adjourned to meet in Baltimore on June i8th. The 
seceders met in another hall in Charleston, adopted 
resolutions embodying the extreme claims of the 
South regarding slavery, and adjourned to meet in 
Richmond on June i ith. The regular convention, on 

507 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

reassembling in Baltimore, nominated Douglas. The 
seceders nominated John C. Breckinridge, of Ken- 
tucky, and Joseph Lane, of Oregon. Nothing could 
indicate more clearly than these two sets of candidates 
and resolutions the division in the Democratic ranks. 
On May 9th a convention of those who could find no 
rest in either the Democratic or the Republican folds 
met at Baltimore, took the name of' the Constitutional 
Union party, and nominated John Bell, of Tennessee, 
and Edward Everett, of Massachusetts. The platform 
declared for "the Constitution of the country, the 
union of the States, and the enforcement of the laws." 
As neither of these principles had been denied by 
either of the opposing parties, it was not clear to 
whom the Constitutional Unionists particularly ap- 
pealed. The Republican convention met at Chicago 
on May i6th. The platform denounced the course of 
the administration in Kansas, asserted that "the 
normal condition of all the territory of the United 
States is that of freedom," and demanded the im- 
mediate admission of Kansas as a free State, adding 
to these an endorsement of a protective tariff and 
"the maintenance inviolate of the rights of the 
States, and especially the right of each State to or- 
der and control its own domestic institutions accord- 
ing to its own judgment exclusively." The candi- 
dates chosen were : for President, Abraham Lincoln, of 
Illinois, and for Vice-president, Hannibal Hamlin, of 
Maine. 

The campaign was exciting, and, on the part of the 
Republicans, enthusiastic. Yet it was clear that a 
great change had come over the face of American 
politics. The Union had become sectional; and the 
Republicans, with both of their candidates represent- 

508 



THE PRELUDE TO THE CIVIL WAR 

ing northern States, and one of them the extreme 
northeastern State of Maine, were almost aggressively 
a sectional, and not a national, party. Thousands of 
copies of Hinton R. Helper's Impending Crisis, a 
southern book published in 1857 to show the eco- 
nomic evils of slavery, were circulated as a campaign 
document. Lincoln was a popular candidate with 
young men and with the conservative opponents of 
slavery. The antislavery sentiment alone, how- 
ever, was not relied upon to win support for the Re- 
publican ticket, and the managers appealed skil- 
fully to the protectionist sentiment of States like 
Pennsylvania for endorsement. The vote was in- 
structive. Lincoln received 180 electoral votes out 
of a total of 303. The Republican popular vote, 
however, was but 1,866,352 in a total vote of 4,682,- 
069. It was obvious that only the divided opposi- 
tion had saved the Republicans from defeat, and 
that unless the advocates of slavery forced the issue 
the party would not be strong enough to carry out 
any radical policy. 

But the radical South forced the issue. It recog- 
nized that the election of Lincoln meant the exclu- 
sion of slavery from the Territories, and the challenge 
thus offered was promptly accepted. South Caro- 
Hna was the only State in which Presidential electors 
were still chosen by the legislature. The legislat- 
ure of that State, meeting on November 5, i860, 
to choose the electors, remained in session imtil the 
result of the election was known. It then imme- 
diately called a convention "to consider the question 
of withdrawing from the Union." The convention 
met December 17th, and on the 20th passed the 
fatal ordinance of secession. The Representatives of 

509 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

the State in Congress at once withdrew. By Feb- 
ruary I, 1 86 1, similar ordinances had been pass- 
ed by Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Loui- 
siana, and Texas. On February 8th delegates from 
the seceded States met at Montgomery and adopted 
a provisional constitution, replaced by a perma- 
nent constitution March nth. The constitution was 
in most respects a copy of the Constitution of the 
United States, but with changes which embodied 
strict construction and recognized slavery. Jeffer- 
son Davis, of Mississippi, was chosen president, and 
Alexander H. Stephens, of Georgia, vice-president 
of the new Confederate States of America. Davis 
was undoubtedly the ablest statesman the South 
had produced since Calhoun, and the acknowledged 
leader of the aggressive South. Stephens, on the 
other hand, was in principles a Whig, and an earnest 
opponent of secession, but he "went with his State," 
as did thousands of others like him when the mo- 
mentous decision was made. 

The organization of secession moved with a rapid- 
ity which to the North was amazing. As fast as the 
States passed ordinances of secession the forts, ar- 
senals, custom - houses, and other federal property 
within their limits were seized, except Fort Sumter, 
Fort Pickens, and the fortifications at Key West. 
The southern arsenals had been lately furnished with 
full supplies of arms by the Secretary of War, so that 
the Confederacy came into possession at once of a 
large part of the military equipment of the federal 
government. In Texas more that half the army 
of the United States was turned over by General 
Twiggs, with all its equipment, to the State. The 
organization of a Confederate army and navy was 

510 



THE PRELUDE TO THE CIVIL WAR 

promptly begun, while commissioners were appoint- 
ed to treat with the government at Washington 
for a division of national property and other obli- 
gations. 

While these revolutionary steps were being taken 
in the South, Congress and the President looked on 
in apparently helpless apathy. Buchanan, acting on 
the advice of his Attorney-General, Black, could only 
declare that while no State had any constitutional 
right to secede, he could do nothing to prevent se- 
cession in case a State chose that course, for Con- 
gress could not constitutionally wage war against a 
State. As to the seizure of national property, he 
w^as equally impotent, since federal troops could be 
used only to sustain a federal official in the enforce- 
ment of law, and all the federal officials in the South 
had resigned. A show of spirit in a special message 
of January 8, 1861, was offset by the failure of an 
attempt to reinforce Fort Sumter, in Charleston Har- 
bor. Congress listened to the farewell words of the 
retiring southern members, debated numerous prop- 
ositions for compromise, and submitted to the States 
a constitutional amendment denying to Congress the 
right to interfere with the domestic institutions of 
any State. Only three States accepted the amend- 
ment. A peace congress, assembled at the sugges- 
tion of Virginia and presided over by ex-President 
Tyler, proposed an elaborate constitutional amend- 
ment which Congress left without action. The only 
positive legislation of importance was the admission 
of Kansas as a State and the organization of the 
Territories of Colorado, Dakota, and Nevada with- 
out mention of slavery. 

Such was the situation when, on March 4, 1861, 

5" 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

under the escort of all the troops that General Scott 
could collect at Washington, the inaugural proces- 
sion moved from Willard's Hotel to the Capitol, and 
Abraham Lincoln took the oath of office as President 
of the United States. 



XXII 

THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

IN his inaugural address President Lincoln declared 
that he had "no purpose, directly or indirectly, to 
interfere with the institution of slavery where it 
exists," but that the power given to him by the Con- 
stitution would be used to enforce the laws and pre- 
serve the Union. To this purpose he steadily ad- 
hered. However logical a consequence of war the 
abolition of slavery might be, however intimate the 
historical connection between slavery and secession, 
it was primarily to prevent secession rather than to 
abolish slavery that the great Civil War was fought. 
Nor was it the war that legally destroyed slavery. 
The larger part of the slaves were emancipated, as a 
legitimate military measure, before the war was over, 
but not until the Constitution had been amended 
did slavery itself disappear. No man in public life 
would have gone further to prevent a rupture be- 
tween North and South than Lincoln, as none would 
have dealt more tenderly with the South after Ap- 
pomattox ; yet none saw more clearly, or kept in view 
more steadily, the precise ground on which the con- 
test must for a time be carried on. 

It was highly important, as a matter of policy, 
that the federal government should, if possible, 
maintain its rights unimpaired without being the 

513 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

first to use force. If there was to be war, it would 
be greatly to the advantage of the North could the 
first act of aggression come from the South. Occa- 
sion soon offered. Fort Sumter, in Charleston Harbor, 
was the only fort in the northern part of the Con- 
federacy remaining in federal hands. An attempt 
to relieve it in January had been unsuccessful, the 
steamer Star of the West, carrying provisions and 
men, having been fired upon by South Carolina bat- 
teries on shore and turned back. The garrison, in- 
cluding non-combatants, consisted of 128 men under 
command of Major Anderson. After careful con- 
sideration it was decided to send provisions to Fort 
Sumter. The decision precipitated the inevitable 
war. On April nth General Beauregard, in com- 
mand of the Confederate forces in South Carolina, 
summoned Major Anderson to surrender. The sum- 
mons was refused, though Anderson offered to evacu- 
ate the fort on the 15th, provided supplies or con- 
trary orders from Washington were not received 
by that time. The reply was adjudged unsatisfac- 
tory, and early the next morning the Confederate 
batteries opened fire. After a bombardment of 
thirty-four hours, in which the fort was practically 
destroyed, the garrison surrendered, being allowed 
to fire a parting salute to the flag as they withdrew. 
On April 15th Lincoln issued a call for 75,000 
volunteers. The response from most of the northern 
States was prompt, and troops were shortly hasten- 
ing to the defence of Washington, for the moment 
in a practically defenceless condition. The capital 
was not reached without difficulty. On April 19th 
the Sixth Massachusetts regiment, marching from 
one railroad station to another in Baltimore, was 

514 



f!^ ^"W^^ S^-^SfT— 








SERGEANT HART NAILING THE COLORS TO FLAG -STAFF, FORT 

SUMTER 



THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

attacked by a mob and obliged to fight its way 
through, with the loss of four killed and a number 
wounded. The Seventh New York and Eight Mas- 
sachusetts regiments made their way from Philadel- 
phia by water, seized the railroad line from Annapolis 
to Washington, and gradually worked their way to 
the capital. In the course of a few weeks 50,000 
troops were assembled about Washington, and the 
city was safe. 

It had been the frequent boast of "fire-eating" 
Southerners that one Southerner could whip four 
Yankees, and at the outbreak of the Civil War the 
northern soldiers held their opponents in equally 
light esteem. Few on either side, apparently, thought 
that the war would be long; a few quick, sharp blows, 
and the struggle would be over. There was eager- 
ness to begin. The volunteers who had responded 
to Lincoln's call were enlisted for but three months, 
and it would not do to let their term expire with- 
out giving them a chance to distinguish themselves. 
General George B. McClellan had been successful in 
driving the Confederates out of West Virginia, a 
Union line had been rapidly formed along the north- 
ern boundary of the Confederacy, and a blockade of 
the southern ports had been proclaimed. The cry 
of "On to Richmond!" now the Confederate capital, 
went up from the North, and Scott, the command- 
ing general, yielded reluctantly to it. On July 21st 
the Union army under General Irwin McDowell met 
the Confederate army under Generals Beauregard and 
Joseph E. Johnston, at Manassas, or Bull Run, about 
thirty-five miles from Washington, and was defeated 
with a loss of about three thousand men. The de- 
feated army fled in panic to Washington. 

515 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

The Confederacy, meantime, had widened its 
boundaries and rapidly organized its forces. Jef- 
ferson Davis's call for volunteers had evoked en- 
thusiastic response, while the decision of the federal 
government to use force had instantly strengthened 
the wavering. On the issuance of Lincoln's call for 
volunteers, the border States of Virginia, North 
Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas promptly seceded. 
The government of Maryland was at first openly hos- 
tile, but the presence of Union troops enabled the 
Union men, who were in the majority, to keep the 
State to its allegiance. Kentucky tried to remain 
neutral, but was shortly forced to the Union side, 
while in Missouri the State officers, themselves 
avowed secessionists, were presently driven out. 
From all the border States, however, many recruits 
joined the Confederate army. The greater part of 
the Confederate forces were massed in eastern Vir- 
ginia, where was to take place some of the hardest 
fighting of the war; but Confederates shortly faced 
Unionists all along the border, garrisoned batteries 
and forts along the Mississippi, whose lower course 
they for a time controlled, and occupied all the im- 
portant points along the coast. 

When Congress met in extra session on July 4th, 
the Treasury was "practically empty, the adminis- 
trative departments disorganized, customs receipts 
almost at a stand-still, the debt increasing, and gov- 
ernment credit ebbing away." * Congress author- 
ized a loan of $250,000,000, empowered the Presi- 
dent to call out 500,000 volunteers for any period 
not exceeding three years, and passed acts for the 

' Dewey, Financial History of the United States, 272. 



THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

enforcement of law in insurrectionary districts and 
for the confiscation of property used for insur- 
rectionary purposes. A direct tax and an income- 
tax were also levied, though neither was to go 
into effect until early in 1862. So far as the im- 
position of new taxes was concerned, Congress did 
little at first to increase the financial resources of the 
government, and borrowing on a large scale had to 
be resorted to. The remaining military events of 
1 85 1 were not striking. In August General Nathan- 
iel Lyon, in command of the Union forces in Missouri, 
was defeated at Wilson's Creek, but the Confederates 
were driven from the State by the end of the year. 
Kentucky also was occupied by Union forces. There 
was another Union reverse in October at Ball's 
Bluff, across the Potomac from Washington. At 
various points on the coast, however, there were 
Union successes, notably at Hatteras Inlet and Port 
Royal. Neither side was yet quite ready for war. 
Troops were still raw and undisciplined, the supply 
of arms and ammunition was insufficient, and com- 
prehensive plans of campaign had not yet been work- 
ed out. The training of the Union troops was the 
first care of McClellan, who succeeded Scott as com- 
manding general in November, 1861. The navy, 
too, was small, and had to be greatly strengthened 
and enlarged before the blockade of the southern 
coast could be made effective. 

Before the war was fairly under way the United 
States found itself on the verge of a serious embroil- 
ment with Great Britain. In November, 1861, J. 
M. Mason and John Slidell, commissioners appointed 
to secure European aid for the Confederate cause, 
were taken from the British mail steamer Trent by 

517 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

the United States sloop-of-war San Jacinto, Captain 
Wilkes, and imprisoned in Fort Warren, in Boston 
Harbor. On the outbreak of hostihties Great Britain 
and other maritime powers had promptly issued 
proclamations of neutrality, thus giving to the Con- 
federacy the rights of belligerents. The forcible 
seizure of the commissioners was instantly resented 
as unwarrantable and a prompt apology demanded, 
British troops being at the same time hastened to 
Canada to give weight to the demand. The United 
States, however, had no intention of championing 
the " right of search, " whose exercise by Great Britain 
had been the great cause of the War of 1812. Mason 
and Slidell were released and the action of Wilkes was 
disavowed. Throughout the early course of the war, 
however, the sympathy of the influential classes in 
England was strongly in favor of the South, and states- 
men and scholars confidently predicted the downfall 
of American institutions. Edward A. Freeman, the 
historian, published in 1863 the first volimie of a His- 
tory of Federal Government from the Foundation of the 
Achaian League to the Disruption of the United States. 
Confederate privateers, built or fitted out in Eng- 
land, for a time almost destroyed American foreign 
commerce. But the knowledge that the United 
States would not tolerate intervention, and would 
probably at once declare war against any power- that 
aided the Confederacy, effectually prevented any 
further official recognition and any active assistance. 
For the support of the campaign of 1862, Congress, 
now at last awakening to a realization of the magni- 
tude of the struggle, made elaborate preparation. 
Issues of $150,000,000 of legal -tender notes and of 
$500,000,000 of bonds were authorized. Duties on 

518 



THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

imports were increased, and an elaborate system of 
internal taxes on a great variety of objects and oc- 
cupations was inaugurated, with the purpose in each 
case of stimulating industry in order thereby to 
create a larger body of taxable wealth. With small 
exception, the increased taxes were patriotically wel- 
comed by the North. A stringent oath of office ex- 
cluded from the public service all who had in any 
way participated in the "rebellion," as the war was 
officially characterized, or who had manifested sym- 
pathy for the Confederate cause. Vast grants of 
land were at the same time made to the States for 
the estabhshment of agricultural colleges, and home- 
steads on the public domain were offered to actual 
settlers on liberal terms. The Union Pacific Rail- 
way was chartered to open up the region west of the 
Mississippi and bind the Pacific coast more firmly to 
the Union. Everywhere the development of natural 
resources and the extension of the settled area went 
hand -in -hand with the great provision of revenue 
and the greater accumulation of debt which the 
extraordinary expenses of war made necessary. 

The military operations of the year began early. 
The theatres of war were, in the West, the Mississippi 
valley, and, in the East, Virginia and Maryland. In 
February General Ulysses S. Grant, with the aid of 
Commodore Foote and a gun-boat flotilla, invaded Con- 
federate territory and took Fort Henry, on the Ten- 
nessee River, following this with the capture of Fort 
Donelson, on the Cumberland. The commandant at 
the latter fort, Buckner, asked Grant for terms. The 
reply came back: " No terms except an unconditional 
and immediate surrender can be accepted. I propose 
to move immediately upon your works." These vic- 

519 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

tories gave the Union forces control of the two rivers 
throughout their lower courses, while the abandonment 
of Columbus by the Confederates shortly placed the 
Mississippi as far south as Island Number Ten, be- 
low the junction of the Ohio, in federal hands. The 
State officials of Tennessee having fled on the occu- 
pation of Nashville by the Union troops, Lincoln ap- 
pointed Andrew Johnson military governor of the 
State. In April a two days' battle at Shiloh. or 
Pittsburg Landing, drove the Confederates out of 
southwestern Tennessee. The next day Island Num- 
ber Ten was surrendered to Foote and General Pope, 
thus opening the upper Mississippi as far as Vicks- 
burg. In May the Union forces under Halleck oc- 
cupied Corinth, Mississippi. To gain control of the 
Mississippi River was of the utmost importance, as 
by so doing the Confederacy would be divided, its 
resisting power weakened, and invasion of its west- 
em end greatly facilitated. The lower course of the 
river was shortly opened. In April a powerful fleet 
under Farragut and a land force under Butler at- 
tacked New Orleans, the principal port of the south- 
ern States. The defences below the city were thought 
impregnable — a barrier of chains and logs, numerous 
fire-rafts, a fleet of gim-boats and iron-clad rams, and 
a floating battery, besides forts Jackson and St. 
Philip. The bombardment of the forts began April 
1 8th; on the 25th Farragut reached New Orleans; on 
the 29th the city surrendered. Memphis was taken 
early in June, and of the Confederate strongholds on 
the river only Vicksburg and Port Hudson remained. 
Bragg, who had succeeded Beauregard, passed 
northward from Chattanooga as far as Louisville, 
Kentucky, but was defeated by Buell, at Perry ville, 

5-'o 





GENERAL ULYSSES S. GRAXT 



THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

October 8th. Bragg succeeded in making good his 
escape into Tennessee with a great quantity of plun- 
der. At luka and Corinth, however, the Confederates 
were repulsed with heavy losses. In December, 
Grant, operating with Sherman against Vicksburg, 
lost his base of supplies at Holly Springs, as the re- 
sult of a sudden attack by Confederate cavalry. But 
the Union line of defence was too strong to be broken 
through. At the great battle of Murfreesborough, 
December 3ist-January 2d, Bragg was again defeated, 
and northern Tennessee remained in federal hands. 

While success was attending the Union forces in 
the West on land and water, the federal arms in the 
East had met with serious reverses. McClellan had 
planned an attack on Richmond. With an army of 
100,000 men he began a movement from Fortress 
Monroe, whither he had transported his army by 
water, up the low peninsula between the York and 
James rivers. While thus occupied, "Stonewall" 
Jackson raided the Shenandoah Valley, threatened 
Washington, and effectually prevented McDowell, who 
had been left at Fredericksburg with 40,000 men, 
from co-operating with McClellan. At Fair Oaks, 
May 3ist-June ist, McClellan was attacked by the 
Confederates under Robert E. Lee and "Stonewall" 
Jackson, and forced to turn aside to Harrison Land- 
ing, on the James, which he reached early in July, 
after seven days of almost continuous fighting. Mc- 
Clellan was severely criticised for his course in this 
campaign, while he in turn accused Stanton, the Sec- 
retary of War, of having done his best to sacrifice 
the army through failure to send the reinforcements 
under McDowell on which McClellan appears to have 
counted. Military critics have been incHned to praise 

HA J 



PIISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

McClellan's brilliant retreat even though they took 
exceptions to the general plan of campaign. 

Popular dissatisfaction at the North, however, de- 
manded a sacrifice. McClellan was removed from 
the chief command, and Halleck, distinguished for 
his success in the West, was appointed in his place, 
while a new "Army of Virginia" was formed under 
command of Pope. Pope was shortly defeated by 
Lee at Bull Run in a four days' battle (August 29th- 
September ist), and compelled to fall back to Wash- 
ington. Lee then invaded Maryland, only to meet 
defeat at Antietam, September 17th, in " the bloodiest 
single day of fighting of the war." But McClellan, 
who was again in command, was slow in pursuit, and 
allowed Lee to withdraw across the Potomac. In 
November McClellan was replaced by Burnside. 
Burnside attacked Lee at the heights of Fredericks- 
burg, but could not dislodge him, and was obliged 
to retire with a loss more than twice that of the Con- 
federates. If it was clear that Lee could not suc- 
cessfully invade the North, it was equally clear that 
the Union forces could not hope easily 'to invade the 
South. 

A brilliant naval battle in Virginia waters early in 
the year did something to offset the failure of the 
Peninsular campaign. The Merrimac, a steam-frig- 
ate which the commandant of the Norfolk navy-yard 
had scuttled and sunk at the outbreak of the war, 
had been raised by the Confederates and converted 
into an iron-clad ram. On March 8th this formidable 
craft, renamed the Virginia, attacked the federal 
fleet at Hampton Roads. The Cumberland was cut 
in two and sunk, and the Congress fired and de- 
stroyed. Nothing, apparently, could save from de- 

522 



THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

struction the entire fleet. During the night, how- 
ever, there arrived at Hampton Roads the Monitor, a 
vessel with a revolving iron turret on a low deck, 
the design of John Ericsson. In the engagement the 
next day between the Monitor and the Virginia, 
neither vessel materially damaged the other; but the 
withdrawal of the Virginia, and its subsequent de- 
struction by the Confederates, left the Monitor, 
which before the engagement had been contemptu- 
ously likened to a "cheese-box on a raft," the victor. 
The battle began a revolution in naval warfare, for it 
showed that the day of wooden ships was past. 

In August, 1 86 1, Congress had by statute pro- 
vided that any slave who should be compelled to bear 
arms or perform any military or naval service against 
the United States should thereupon become free. 
Subsequent statutes forbade the military and naval 
authorities to aid in the return of fugitive slaves, 
abolished slavery in the District of Columbia and the 
Territories — in the former at an expense of about 
a million dollars — declared free all fugitives escaping 
within the Union lines, and authorized the employ- 
ment of negroes as soldiers. Some 180,000 negroes 
enlisted in the Union army during the war, and served 
with credit. General Benjamin F. Butler, the fed- 
eral commander at New Orleans, had already, earHer 
in the war, treated escaped slaves as " contraband of 
war," but the action of some of the federal com- 
manders in declaring free the slaves in the districts 
occupied by their armies had, however, been dis- 
avowed by Lincoln. The general abolition of sla- 
very throughout the United States was, of course, 
early seen to be a possible result of the war, but 
there was difference of opinion as to the way in 

523 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

which such a result could be brought about. In April, 
1862, a resolution of Congress, following Lincoln's 
suggestion, declared "that the United States ought 
to co-operate with any State which may adopt grad- 
ual abolishment of slavery, giving to such State pe- 
cuniary aid to be used ... to compensate for the in- 
conveniences, public and private, produced by such 
change of system." This project of "compensated 
emancipation" had Lincoln's hearty support, but ef- 
forts to secure its adoption in the border States were 
fruitless. By midsummer, however, Lincoln, who 
was now prepared to make slavery as well as secession 
a cause of the war, had decided upon emancipation 
by Executive act, and September 2 2d, five days 
after the repulse of Lee at Antietam, a preliminary 
proclamation announced that on January i, 1863, 
all the slaves in States which were then in rebel- 
lion would be freed. On the appointed day the 
definitive proclamation was issued. Epoch-making 
as was the event, its precise significance should not 
be misunderstood. The emancipation proclamation 
was in law only a military measure designed to crip- 
ple the power of the enemy, and as such was fully 
warranted by the Constitution and by miHtary law. 
It dealt slavery a blow from which there was no pos- 
sibility of recovery, but it did not aboHsh slavery as a 
system, nor did it affect any State or part of a State 
in which there was no war. It was not until Decem- 
ber 18, 1865, that the Thirteenth Amendment to the 
Constitution put an end to slavery throughout the 
United States. 

Terrible as was the punishment which the loss of 
property by emancipation meted out to the South — 
a loss estimated at $2,000,000,000 — emancipation was, 

524 



THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

after all, but one, though the severest, of a num- 
ber of drastic measures employed to crush the Con- 
federacy. The blockade of the coast, more and more 
rigidly enforced, destroyed the cotton trade and 
practically cut off all outside supplies of food, cloth- 
ing, and munitions of war from the South. The 
value of cotton exported fell from more than $202,- 
000,000 in i860 to $4,000,000 in 1862. In December, 
1862, the ancient commonwealth of Virginia was dis- 
membered, and forty-eight counties were admitted 
to the Union as the State of West Virginia. In 
March, 1863, the President was authorized to sus- 
pend the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus in 
any part of the country whenever, in his judgment, 
the public* safety required it. So far as practice was 
concerned, the act only gave formal sanction to what 
had been done ever since the war broke out. Through- 
out the North large numbers of persons, alleged to 
be in sympathy with the Confederate cause or sus- 
pected of giving aid to it, had been arrested by mili- 
tary authority, confined in prisons and jails, and 
denied the privilege of trial before the civil courts. 
There can be no doubt that many of these arrests 
were illegal, and that innocent persons were put to 
inconvenience and suffering as a result of them, but 
the exigency of war made redress for the time being 
out of the question. There was thought to be no 
time to consider questions of private political right or 
civil privilege when the nation was fighting for its 
life. It is interesting to note that in the Confederacy 
President Davis freely exercised the right of suspend- 
ing the habeas corpus privilege, with the result that 
the government of the Confederacy, for the greater 
part of the war, became a military despotism. The 

525 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

policy of Davis called forth increasing criticism as 
the war went on, and in the Confederate army there 
were many desertions. 

The great battles of 1863 took place in Virginia, 
in Tennessee, and on the Mississippi. The Army of 
the Potomac, now under command of "Fighting Joe 
Hooker," crossed the Rappahannock, and on May 2d 
met Lee at C'hancellorsville. A two days' battle 
drove the Union forces back across the Rappahan- 
nock with heavy loss, though the death of " Stonewall " 
Jackson, who was shot by mistake by Confederate 
pickets, was an irreparable loss to the Confederate 
cause. In June Lee invaded the North by way of 
the Shenandoah Valle}^, crossed the Potomac, and 
entered Pennsylvania. His advance caused wide- 
spread alarm. Hooker was replaced by Meade, and 
on July ist the two armies met at Gettysburg. The 
three days' battle which followed was the only great 
engagement within the limits of a free State. The 
Union forces occupied Cemetery Ridge, while Lee's 
army took possession of Seminary Ridge opposite. 
On the second day the Confederates made a desperate 
effort to take the hill known as Little Round Top, 
which the Union forces had not occupied, but they 
were beaten back, though they succeeded in taking 
the Union position at Culp's Hill. On the third day 
Lee attacked the Union centre. After two hours of 
terrific cannonading, 15,000 Confederates under 
Pickett, moving in triple ranks a mile wide, ad- 
vanced across the space which separated the two 
armies, straight up the hill, where Hancock, protected 
by a stone wall, awaited the charge. A few reached 
the wall, where a desperate hand-to-hand fight en- 
sued. But before the awful fire of the Union bat- 

526 



THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

teries and musketry no men could stand, and a hill- 
side strewn thick with dead and wounded marked 
the Confederate defeat. If anything more were need- 
ed to consecrate this greatest of all American battle- 
fields, it was the noble address of Lincoln, on the 
1 9th of the following ' November, at the dedication 
of a part of the field as a national military ceme- 
tery. Lee fell back towards Riclimond, whither 
Meade, whose losses were greater than those of his 
opponent, slowl}^ followed. 

The next day, July 4th, Grant occupied Vicksburg. 
Grant had spent some months in unsuccessful efforts 
to reduce Vicksburg from the west side of the Missis- 
sippi. Then, in April, his gun-boats under Porter 
having passed the batteries, Grant crossed the river 
below the city and started northward. At Jackson, 
Mississippi, he defeated a Confederate force under 
General Joseph E. Johnston, and by destroying the 
railroads cut off the supplies from Vicksburg. In 
May he defeated Pemberton, and drove him into the 
city, and, effecting a junction with Sherman, began 
a siege. Batteries on land and gun-boats on the 
river kept up an incessant bombardment, and before 
long starvation, sickhess, and death wrought fearful 
havoc among the garrison and the inhabitants. On 
July 3d, after an investment of six weeks, the 
city was surrendered, and the next day the Union 
forces took possession. The prisoners, including non- 
combatants, nimibered about thirty-two thousand. 
Five days later the capitulation of Port Hudson gave 
the control of the Mississippi to the Union forces. 
The Confederacy had been "cut in two," and Louisi- 
ana and Texas could no longer feed or help the East. 

While Grant was reducing Vicksburg, Rosecrans 

527 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

had forced Bragg out of Tennessee into Georgia. At 
Chickamauga Creek, however, Bragg made a stand, 
and on September 19th and 20th inflicted upon a part 
of theUnion army a severe defeat. Thanks to General 
George H. Thomas, the remainder of the Union army 
was enabled to retire to Chattanooga, where it was 
closely besieged by Bragg for two months, the cutting 
off of supplies reducing it near to starvation. In 
November Grant, with Hooker, Sherman, and Sheri- 
dan, moved to Thomas's relief. On the 24th Hooker 
drove Bragg's forces from Lookout Mountain — the 
"battle above the clouds "^and the next day Sher- 
man stormed Missionary Ridge. Bragg withdrew 
towards Atlanta. 

Grant next turned his attention to Lee, an an- 
tagonist whose skill was at least equal to his own, 
but whose resources in men, money, and supplies 
were rapidly disappearing with the exhaustion of 
the Confederacy. The objective point was Rich- 
mond. At the beginning of May, 1864, Grant en- 
tered the wild region beyond the Rapidan known as 
the "Wilderness " and began "hammering." A two 
days' battle resulted only in awful loss of life ; Spott- 
sylvania Court-House, a few days later, was a repeti- 
tion of the Wilderness battle; and an ill-advised as- 
sault on Lee's intrenchments at Cold Harbor cost 
10,000 men. The total Union losses during six 
weeks of campaigning were about fifty -five thou- 
sand. In hope of diverting Grant from Petersburg, 
which he had besieged, Lee sent Early on a raid down 
the Shenandoah Valley, but beyond threatening 
Washington, burning Chambersburg, and plundering 
the country, the diversion accomplished nothing. 
To prevent any further use of this tempting avenue 

528 



THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

to the North, Grant sent Sheridan to devastate 
the valley — a charge which was carried out so 
thoroughly that it was said a crow could not fly 
through the valley unless he took his food with 
him. 

Sherman, meantime, had moved against Johnston, 
Driving his enemy slowly before him, by July he was 
in sight of Atlanta. Hood now replaced Johnston, 
but, hard fighter though he was, he could not hold 
Atlanta, and September ist the Union forces entered 
the city. The inhabitants were compelled to leave, 
and the city was turned into a military post. But 
Sherman's position was precarious. His only source 
of supply for his army was Nashville, with which he 
was connected by a single line of railroad. With 
Grant's approval, he now determined to abandon 
Atlanta and march to Savannah. On November 
15th the Union army of 60,000 men began the fa- 
mous "march to the sea." It was a terrible visita- 
tion for an already exhausted country. Through 
a strip sixty miles wide, railroads and all property 
likely to prove useful to the Confederates were de- 
stroyed, and the plantations stripped of horses, 
mules, provisions, and valuables. Private as well as 
public property was despoiled. On Christmas Day 
Sherman was in ])ossession of Savannah. After a 
month's rest he started north to join Grant, ending his 
victorious progress at Goldsborough, North Carolina, 
on March 1 6th. Nothing could have shown more strik- 
ingly the hollowness of the Confederacy. Hood, who 
had been sent to threaten Nashville, had in the mean 
time been utterly routed by Thomas in December, 
before Sherman reached Savannah; Farragut had 
roimded out his brilliant career by fighting his way 

529 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

into the harbor of Mobile; and Fort Fisher, in Wil- 
mington Harbor, North Carolina, had fallen. 

The Presidential election of 1864 was the second 
war-time election in our history. The political sky- 
had been for some time threatening. Notwithstand- 
ing the successes of the Union armies and the accumu- 
lating proofs that the resisting power of the Con- 
federacy was near its end, there had long been much 
criticism of the President and Congress for their con- 
duct of the war. There were the inevitable jealousies 
of commanders, more sharply exhibited, as usual, in 
the extravagant claims of their supporters than in 
the protestations of the men themselves. McClellan 
in particular was felt by many to have been unjustly 
treated. Enthusiasm, too, had waned, and the enor- 
mous loss of life had discouraged enlistments. It 
had been necessary to resort to drafting, or forcible 
conscription, and the draft riots in New York, in 
July, 1863, when for four days the city was helpless 
in the hands of a mob, were fresh in mind. The war 
was costing nearly three million dollars a day, there 
was an appalling burden of debt, speculation was rife, 
and taxes and prices had moimted to unheard - of 
figures. Many fortunes had been made during the 
war, and there were ugly rumors of fraud, favoritism, 
and official corruption. Prominent among the causes 
of dissatisfaction was the wholesale interference with 
the privilege of habeas corpus, though the activity of 
secret organizations in Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, 
having for their aim forcible resistance to the federal 
government, seemed to make such interference more 
than ever justifiable. The State elections of 1862 
had gone rather against the Republicans, the im- 
portant State of New York having been lost to them, 

530 




ADMIRAL FARRAGUT 



THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

and their majority in the House of Representatives 
had been reduced. Lincoln, though strong with the 
mass of the people, had many foes within his own po- 
litical household, especially among those who were 
restive under his conservative policy and clamorous 
for more radical measures. 

The Republicans met the situation with aggressive 
boldness, rightly regarding the re-election of Lincoln 
as equal in importance to the winning of any cam- 
paign in the field; and they welcomed to their con- 
vention at Baltimore representatives of all parties 
who were agreed that the Union should be maintain- 
ed intact. Tennessee, Louisiana, and Arkansas, in 
which "reconstructed" loyal governments had been 
established, were also represented, and their delegates 
allowed to vote. The platform of this Union con- 
vention pledged the fuL support of the party to the 
government in the prosecution of the war to a suc- 
cessful conclusion, demanded the prohibition of 
slavery by constitutional amendment, declared that 
the national faith pledged for the redemption of the 
public debt must be kept inviolate, and applauded 
"the practical wisdom, the unselfish patriotism, and 
the unswerving fidelity" of Lincoln. The candidate 
for Vice-president was Andrew Johnson, of Tennes- 
see, a Union Democrat. The Democrats nominated 
General McClellan on a platform which characterized 
the war as "four years of failure," and demanded 
its immediate cessation. The declaration of the plat- 
form was practically repudiated by the candidate. 
The twenty-five States which took part in the elec- 
tion returned 212 electoral votes for Lincoln to 21 
for McClellan, while the popular vote showed a plu- 
rality of 494,567 in a total of 4,166,537. 

531 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

The final act of the great drama soon opened. In 
February, 1865, Confederate commissioners met Lin- 
coln and Seward at Hampton Roads and discussed 
terms of peace; but, as the commissioners could not 
promise a return of the seceded States to their al- 
legiance, the negotiations were fruitless. Lincoln's 
inaugural address in March expressed a fervent hope 
for peace, but held out no promise of a cessation of 
hostilities until the cause of the North should have 
triumphed. Sherman's cavalry shortly cut off sup- 
plies from Richmond, and on April 2d Petersburg, 
now nine months besieged, was carried by assault. 
Richmond was at once abandoned, and the next day 
the Union army took possession of the Confederate 
capital. Six days later, at Appomattox Court-House, 
Lee surrendered his army to Grant. The terms were 
generous: Lee's men were to lay down their arms and 
be released on parole, the soldiers being allowed to 
keep their horses "for the spring ploughing and farm- 
work." The United States neither tried nor executed 
any one for treason. On April 26th Johnston surren- 
dered his army to Sherman, and the great Civil War 
was at an end. The high hopes of the South had 
indeed been blasted, its dominant political and social 
ideals trampled remorselessly under foot ; but there 
was a gain that outweighed the loss. For with the 
downfall of the Confederacy the South entered upon 
a new life. The incubus of slavery, which for genera- 
tions had hung like a dead weight about its neck, was 
cast off. The South ceased to rest its economic life 
on a patriarchal system of agriculture, and entered 
with free labor upon an industrial development which 
was to bring it happiness, prosperity, and a new hope. 
Dreadful as were the ravages of war, humiliating as 

532 



THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

were the political experiences through which it had 
yet to pass, the South had attained — what it had never 
known before — freedom ; and from the time when the 
" lost cause " became but a memory and a name, those 
who had staked their all upon it set themselves to 
construct a new South which should contribute not 
less than the old had done to the prosperity and wel- 
fare of the nation and the enrichment of the national 
character. 

It would have been well for the South if Lincoln 
could have lived to direct the rehabilitation. But his 
work, too, was done. He was shot as he sat in a box 
at Ford's Theatre, in Washington, on the night of 
April 14th, and died the next morning. His death 
robbed the South of its best and wisest friend. 
Unbending as his determination to save the Union 
at any cost had been, he was nevertheless consid- 
erate of the South, and willing to the last to enter- 
tain any reasonable proposition for peace. No one 
could have acted less as a mere politician or more as 
a patriot and statesman than did Lincoln throughout 
the four troubled years of his momentous administra- 
tion. Could he have lived to direct with Congress 
the reconstruction of the seceded States, the South 
might have been spared the orgy of insult and crime 
which the Republican party, blind to its own perma- 
nent interests, later fostered. In his rugged simpHc- 
ity, frank honesty, pervading seriousness, and prac- 
tical good sense, he was, for the ante-bellum period, 
a typical American, and it was fitting that under him 
the Union was saved. 

It is difficult to comprehend the enormous cost of 
the war. A total of about 2,700,000 men were en- 
rolled in the Union army and navy. Of this number 

533 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

over 300,000 were killed or died in the service. The 
losses of the South, though not accurately known, 
probably equalled in number those of the North; 
but only about half as many Confederates were en- 
rolled. The enormous pension list, aggregating 
$138,898,000 in 1903, and amounting, all told, to 
$2,979,938,000 since 1861, testifies to the burden 
which the war entailed upon future generations. 
The military and naval expenditures for four years 
had been over $3,000,000,000, and the debt of 
the United States at the end of the war was over 
$2,600,000,000. To all this must be added the ex- 
penditures of the States in equipping troops, most 
of which were subsequently reimbursed by the United 
States ; the outlay for State pensions and bounties ; and 
the cost to the people in the enhanced prices— greater 
by considerable than the accompanying rise in wages 
— of commodities of all sorts as a result of high taxes, 
extraordinary expenditures, the speculation which al- 
ways accompanies war, and paper money. A recent 
estimate, aggregating all these items, places the total 
cost of the Civil War to the present time at about 
seven billion dollars. " Compensated emancipation 
had been thought impracticable because, it was said, 
it would cost the federal government the ruinous sum 
of one billion dollars. Could any one have foreseen 
the cost of war, a thousand million dollars might well 
have seemed a trivial sum. 

Of the financial measures of the war period, some 
had far-reaching consequences. It was the defect 
of the financial administration that it failed prompt- 
ly to meet the increased expenditures by increased 
taxes, notwithstanding the readiness of the people to 
pay. Resort was had instead to issues of bonds, 

534 



THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

treasury notes, and legal-tender paper-money; and 
such issues were continued throughout the war. So 
far as giving the paper-money a legal-tender quality 
was concerned, the measure was certainly of doubt- 
ful legality, if not of doubtful propriety, and brought 
grave financial difficulties later. The large volume 
of paper, moreover, joined to the demand for money 
incident to the large bond issues, speedily drove 
specie out of active circulation, and it was not until 
January i, 1879, that specie payment was resumed. 
The tariff policy which the exigencies of war made 
necessary operated, by powerfully stimulating do- 
mestic manufactures and adding greatly to their 
profitableness, tg fasten upon the country the regime 
of high protective duties, and, by the creation of 
"favored interests," to induce political as well as 
economic complications of profound seriousness. On 
the other hand, the national banking system, finally 
established in 1863, though having for its immediate 
object the facilitating of the sale of United States 
bonds, contributed powerfully to the business prosper- 
ity and stability of the country by the uniformity of 
its bank organization and note issues, and the security 
of its credit based upon the promise of the United States 
to redeem the bonds held as security for the notes. 

Yet, great as was the burden which the war entailed 
upon the North, the burden upon the South was in 
proportion vastly greater. When the forces of Lee 
and Johnston laid down their arms, the South was 
prostrate. Of the men whom the Confederacy sent 
into the field, more than a fourth had died. The 
country, as a whole, was desolate. The operations of 
war had destroyed vast amounts of property, both 
public and private, much necessarily, much wanton- 

535 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

ly. Everywhere houses, mills, and other buildings 
had been burned, woods and orchards cut down, 
horses, mules, and cattle carried off. Railroads not 
destroyed by the federal troops deteriorated rapidly ; 
as early as 1863 only a few operated more than two 
trains a day. "The North Carolina Railroad had 
only five serviceable passenger cars left for its two 
hundred and twenty-three miles." * The destruction 
of personal property by the soldiers, both Union 
and Confederate, had been immense. Industry was 
at a stand-still. The great staple crops had almost 
ceased to be raised, nor could they readily find a 
market if produced, though some cotton continued to 
be exported, despite the blockade, throughout the war. 
Very early in the war there began to be a scarcity of 
many necessary articles of daily consumption, and 
the scarcity became acute as the grip of the North 
tightened. The Union army was the best -fed, best- 
clothed, and best-sheltered army that had ever been 
set on foot in the world ; the Confederates, on the con- 
trary, were often hungry, cold, and half naked. Not 
the least pathetic incident in Lee's surrender was his 
request that his famished troops might be fed. 
Throughout the Confederacy such articles as flour, 
cloth, leather, paper, salt, and hardware were for the 
most part obtainable only at extravagant prices, and 
then with difficulty. Nor was this all. The emanci- 
pation of the negroes destroyed at a single blow a 
large part of the personal property of the South, at 
the same time that it made a revolutionary change 
in the whole industrial system. With the fall of the 
Confederacy, too, the hundreds of millions invested 

• Schwab, Confederate States of America, 274. 





GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE 



THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

in Confjederate bonds were rendered worthless, as was 
the Confederate paper -money, while in 1868 the 
Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution forbade 
the payment of any portion of the Confederate debt. 
Every dollar which the States or individuals had ex- 
pended in aid of secession was thus a total loss. 
Never was a conquered people anywhere so crushed, 
never a vanquished enemy left so completely without 
financial resource. 

Little as one might esteem the cause for which the 
South fought, the heroic devotion of the people com- 
manded admiration and praise. Constancy, high 
spirit, family and sectional pride animated the south- 
ern armies, and went far to offset the disparity of 
numbers. When the fathers fell, the sons took their 
places, for the whole male population had soon to be 
drawn upon to recruit the thinning ranks. In April, 
1862, conscription was resorted to, and at the end 
of the war boys and old men were serving in the 
field. It had even been proposed to arm the slaves. 
At home, alone on the plantation, the women toiled 
and stiffered to care for the children, manage the es- 
tate, and aid the soldiers in the field. Of all the 
heroism of women which history records, none any- 
where compares in courage and steadfastness with the 
heroism of the women of the South during the Civil 
War. The negroes, for the most part, remained faith- 
ful, though delighting to give secret aid to the Union 
soldiers; and throughout the war life, property, and 
the honor of women were uniformly respected and 
safeguarded by the blacks. It was the events con- 
nected with reconstruction rather than the Civil War 
or emancipation that bred enmity between the races 
in the SoAith, 

35 537 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

Discussion of the legal merits of a controversy 
which has been settled, beyond peradventure, not by 
law but by sheer physical force, must always appear 
somewhat academic. It may be pointed out, how- 
ever, that the constitutional principle for which the 
South contended, and which the Civil War for all 
time repudiated, never rested upon any undisputed 
canon of constitutional interpretation, and consist- 
ently ignored the steady development of American 
political thought. Doubtless, when the Constitution 
was adopted, there were few people in any State who 
looked upon the new union as any more " perpetual" 
than that of the confederation which preceded it. 
The United States had tried one form of national 
government, had found it fatally defective, and had 
replaced it by another. There is little in the history 
of the period to indicate that the States which came 
in under the "new roof" looked upon the structure 
as anything more than a better arrangement, a 
"more perfect" union, from which they could, how- 
ever, withdraw, if they chose, should it prove un- 
satisfactory. Down to the time of the Civil War, 
the North as well as the South had its advocates of 
nullification and disunion, its champions of strict 
construction, its expounders of State rights. What 
the South failed to see, however, was that the whole 
course of national development "was steadily making 
the State-rights doctrine practically unworkable, and 
that secession would be resisted, not because the Con- 
stitution in terms or by implication forbade it, but 
because national self-interest demanded the preserva- 
tion of the Union. Into this broader life of national- 
ity the old South never entered. It lived in the past, 
thought in the past, conceived of no future different 

538 



THE WAR FOR THE UNION 

from the past. Its constitutional arguments had 
r^uch logical keenness and cogency, but they sounded 
remote and impractical to men who felt that, what- 
ever the policy of the moment, the nation must in the 
nature of things be supreme. 

No doubt there were times between 1789 and 1861 
when this centralizing tendency in the federal gov- 
ernment threatened to work fast and far, and when 
the maintenance of the States as vital, distinctive 
parts of the nation seemed endangered. For such 
excesses the stout insistence upon the constitutional 
rights of the States was a healthy corrective. No 
doubt, too, the far-reaching scope of Chief -justice 
Marshall's great decisions seemed to many to jeop- 
ardize time-honored rights of person and property 
by transferring the ultimate control of them from 
the State to the United States. But so long as the 
Constitution contained within itself clear and ade- 
quate provision for its own amendment, so long as 
the principle of majority rule in matters of political 
discretion prevailed, secession was revolution, justi- 
fiable only if successful. It was the inestimable ser- 
vice of the Civil War to emancipate the political 
thought of the South from slavery to an outgrown 
theory, to show that a strong national government 
is no menace to the liberty of any loyal State, and to 
insist upon the obedience of all citizens as the indis- 
pensable prerequisite to national health, efficiency, 
and success. 



XXIII 

RECONSTRUCTION 

THE close of the Civil War left the United States, 
notwithstanding the overwhelming victory of the 
North, with many serious problems. The army was 
quickly and quietly disbanded, and the hundreds of 
thousands of soldiers returned to civil life to find em- 
ployment as best they might; but the situation was 
as abnormal as it was peaceful. There was an enor- 
mous debt to be paid and specie payment to be re- 
sumed, and both as soon as practicable without 
financial disturbance. The cessation of the extraor- 
dinary demand for war materials of all sorts neces- 
sitated the speedy diversion of capital and labor to 
new fields. Both domestic and foreign trade, the 
latter in particular greatly affected during the war 
by the depredations of Confederate cruisers and 
privateers, needed to be brought back to their nor- 
mal channels. The North and South must not only 
live together, but trade with each other. The great 
danger was, not that the readjustment would be 
delayed, but that it would come suddenly and vio- 
lently, with financial stringency, commercial disaster, 
and industrial disorder following in its train. The 
United States had been successful in a great war: 
could it achieve equal success in the more prosaic 
field of political and economic reorganization? 

S40 



RECONSTRUCTION 

Of all the problems raised by the war, however, 
none were more serious or complicated than those 
connected with the political reorganization of the 
southern States and the treatment of the negroes. 
At the beginning of the war the federal govern- 
ment had felt it necessary, for political reasons, to 
deny the possibility of secession in fact as well as in 
theory. The "so-called Confederacy," "the pre- 
tended government," and the like, are phrases which 
occur frequently in the statutes and other documents 
of the time. So, after the war was over, many Re- 
publican leaders insisted that, be the legal or consti- 
tutional status of the South what it might, the South 
had not in fact seceded, but had only tried to secede ; 
and this view was later taken by the Supreme Court. 
Whatever the worth of this contention as a legal 
theory, it was clear enough that, as a matter of fact, 
the States of the Confederacy had had for four years 
no political connection whatever with the United 
States, that they had yielded no obedience to its 
laws, but, on the contrary, had established and main- 
tained a government of their own, and that they had 
been recognized as belligerents by foreign nations. 
If, during this time, they had continued to be "in 
the Union," it could only be because of some legal 
fiction new to American experience, and hence not of 
undisputed application. 

On the other hand, it was equally clear that the 
relation of the late seceded States to the Union, now 
that they had been overcome, was not the same as 
it had been before the war. Their constitutions, for 
example, still recognized slavery. Their laws bound 
the States to the payment of debts arising from the 
war against the Union. Should these States be al- 

541 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

lowed to reorganize their governments as before 1861, 
and continue white supremacy and negro subjection? 
Should Senators and Representatives, as soon as regu- 
larly chosen, be admitted to Congress? Should the 
South be allowed to vote in the Presidential election 
of 1868? Or should the States which for four years 
had maintained practical independence by force of 
arms be treated as conquered territory, to be organ- 
ized and dealt with as Congress and the President 
might see fit, and in the way that would best insure 
the perpetuation of the principles for which the North 
had fought? These were questions on which the 
Constitution was silent, and for whose answer the 
history of the United States thus far afforded no 
precedent, and, for that matter, hardly a guide. 

The subject of the political treatment of the Soutli 
after the "insurrection" or "rebellion," as it was 
commonly called, had been put down was early con- 
sidered by both Congress and the President. In De- 
cember, 1863, Lincoln, in a proclamation granting 
amnesty, with certain exceptions, to persons who 
had engaged in rebellion against the United States, 
declared that whenever, in any of the seceded States 
except Virginia, loyal persons not less in number than 
one-tenth of those who had voted in the Presidential 
election of i860 should re-establish a State govern- 
ment republican in form, it would be recognized and 
protected "as the true government of the State." 
Virginia was excepted because Lincoln had already 
recognized there the loyal "Pierpont" government. 
It was further suggested that, in such reorganization, 
" the name of the State, the boundary, the subdivi- 
sions, the constitution, and the general code of laws, 
as before the rebellion, be maintained" so far as pos- 

542 



RECONSTRUCTION 

sible; but Lincoln was careful to say that the ad- 
mission of Senators and Representatives from such 
State was not for the Executive, but for Congress, to 
determine. It will be observed that no mention was 
made of negro suffrage. Arkansas had already been 
reconstructed, and within a year loyal governments 
formed in accordance with this proclamation were 
recognized in Louisiana and Tennessee. In Lincoln's 
view, the Union was indestructible, and it was his 
duty to restore the southern States to the constitu- 
tional position in the Union which they had tem- 
porarily abandoned. 

To many, however, ten per cent, of the voters 
seemed too slight a basis on which to found a loyal 
government in a State which had but lately taken 
arms against the United States. In Congress there 
was a growing feeling that reconstruction was, after 
all, a legislative rather than an Executive act. Ac- 
cordingly, in July, 1864, Congress passed a bill em- 
bodying a different plan. In each State the President 
was to appoint a provisional governor. As soon as 
hostilities in the State had ceased, the governor was 
to enroll all the white male citizens, and request each 
to take an oath to support the Constitution of the 
United States. If a majority took the oath, then a 
convention was to be held, under the supervision of 
the governor, and the government of the State re- 
established. As a condition of such reorganization, 
however, the convention was to incorporate in the 
State constitution provisions excluding Confederate 
office-holders from voting and from holding office as 
legislators or governor, abolishing slavery, and re- 
pudiating the Confederate debt. If a majority of the 
voters approved this revised constitution and re- 

543 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

constructed government, the President, with the as- 
sent of Congress, was to recognize it by proclamation 
as " the constitutional government of the State," and 
the State was then to be allowed to choose Senators, 
Representatives, and Presidentfal electors. The bill 
further emancipated the slaves in all the seceded 
States. 

The difference between the Congressional plan and 
Lincoln's plan was fundamental. Instead of allow- 
ing a small minority of the voters, if loyal, to re- 
establish the State government in any way they saw 
fit, the Wade- Davis bill, as it was called from its 
principal framers and advocates, required the assent 
of a majority of the voters acting through a con- 
vention, imposed three radical conditions on the 
State, gave to the provisional governor direct control 
over every detail of the process of reconstruction, 
and made final recognition by proclamation of the 
President dependent upon the previous approval of 
Congress. Lincoln killed the bill by a " pocket veto," 
declaring that he was not ready to be "inflexibly 
committed to any single plan of restoration," or to 
ignore the reconstructed governments of Arkansas 
and Louisiana, which had already been recognized. 
He doubted also the constitutional competency of 
Congress to abolish slavery by statute. 

The Wade - Davis bill contained the elements of 
the plan of reconstruction which Congress more and 
more steadily urged, and which in the end came to 
prevail. It is possible that, had Lincoln approved 
the bill, a compromise might later have been reached 
which would have been beneficial to all concerned. 
Lincoln himself seems to have had some misgivings 
about the propriety of his veto. Congress, however, 

544 



RECONSTRUCTION 

was not prevented from acting. In February, 1865, 
a joint resolution declared the seceded States to be 
not entitled to representation in the electoral college 
for the choice of President and Vice - president. 
Recognition of Virginia had previously been with- 
drawn. In March the destitute and helpless con- 
dition of the freed negroes, or "freedmen," led to the 
organization of a freedmen's bureau as a branch of 
the War Department. The commissioner in charge 
was authorized to take possession of abandoned lands 
in the late insurrectionary States, and to allot them 
to the freedmen in quantities not exceeding forty acres 
to each, while the Secretary of War was empowered 
to relieve distress by the issue of provisions, fuel, and 
clothing. It was a well-intentioned act of humanity, 
but the ignorance of the negroes went far to frus- 
trate its purpose. The negroes gathered about the 
offices of the bureau, refused in many cases to work, 
told how "the government" was to give each man 
"forty acres and a mule," and demanded "the pro- 
visions of the Constitution." On December i8th 
the Thirteenth Amendment, forever abolishing sla- 
very "within the United States or any place sub- 
ject to their jurisdiction," was formally declared 
to be in force, though Seward, in order to obtain 
the three - fourths majority required by the Con- 
stitution, was obliged to count the eleven former 
slave States which had ratified the amendment. 
Whatever the value of Executive reconstruction in 
the mind of Congress, these eleven States were clearly 
"good enough to count" when the ratification of a 
constitutional amendment was involved. It was 
easy to see, however, that the presence of the negro 
was immensely to complicate the process of recon- 

545 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

struction, though none, perhaps, could foresee the 
extremes to which reconstruction was shortly to go, 
still less the heritage of hate which it was to leave for 
the coming generation. 

Andrew Johnson, whom the tragedy of Lincoln's 
death unexpectedly elevated to the Presidency, was 
ill-fitted to be at the head of the executive depart- 
ment in a time of strong sectional feeling and grow- 
ing partisan vindictiveness. A representative of the 
"poor whites" of Tennessee, and self-taught, his 
social position had from the beginning placed him 
in opposition to the slave - holding class, while his 
strong Union sentiments, joined to his official promi- 
nence as military governor of his State, had brought 
upon him the enmity of all who in Tennessee had 
favored secession. Could he have had his way, some 
of the Confederate leaders would have been hanged, 
and for a time it was not certain that such would 
not be their fate. The Republicans had nominated 
him for Vice-president, not because he was a Repub- 
lican, for he was not, but in order to emphasize the 
national scope of the party and win the support of 
the "war Democrats." His views on many of the 
constitutional questions which arose during his ad- 
ministration are now conceded to have been, in the 
main, sounder than those of his opponents, but his 
narrowness and coarseness, and, above all, his violent 
temper and speech, early plunged him into a strug- 
gle with Congress and the country which has no 
counterpart in our history, and the incidents of 
which it is even now painful to recall. 

Although Johnson had little interest in the freed- 
men, it was his intention to carry out Lincoln's policy, 
with whose principles he professed entire accord. 

546 



RECONSTRUCTION 

Amnesty for all but certain classes of persons was 
proclaimed, the blockade of southern ports discon- 
tinued, and the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus 
again granted. By the middle of July, 1865, mili- 
tary governors, charged with the duty of summon- 
ing conventions and re-establishing loyal State gov- 
ernments, had been appointed in North Carolina, 
South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Missis- 
sippi, and Texas, and the Pierpont government in 
Virginia had been again recognized. Obviously, it 
was the intention of the President to bring the 
States back into the Union as soon as possible. 
On April 2d a proclamation formally declared the 
rebellion at an end. Senators and Representatives 
from the reconstructed States, many of them late 
Confederate soldiers, appeared at Washington in 
December with their credentials and demanded seats 
in Congress — a situation which strained sadly the 
temper of the Republican leaders. In the mean 
time, however, the legislation of some of the south- 
ern States regarding the freedmen was such as to 
cause suspicion and alarm. It was widely believed 
in the South that the negro would work only under 
compulsion, and that he would speedily become a 
pauper or a vagrant if allowed to do as he pleased; 
while the whites were as a whole unalterably op- 
posed, of course, to associating with the negroes on 
terms of equality. In a number of States, accord- 
ingly, acts were passed ostensibly to protect life and 
property from idle, criminal, or vagrant negroes, 
but having the effect in practice of reviving many of 
the restrictive and penal features of the old slave 
codes, and in any case of keeping the freedmen in 
severe subjection. To compel a negro to obtain and 

547 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

carry about with him a license in order to work or 
go from place to place, to compel him to work out 
a fine by labor for private persons, was virtually to 
reduce him to servitude. To many Republicans in 
Congress it seemed as though the work of emancipa- 
tion was to be undone. It is true that in some of the 
States these "vagrancy acts" were set aside by the 
military governors, but this was clearly only a tem- 
porary expedient. The Thirteenth Amendment did 
not determine the political or civil status of the 
negro, but only insured his freedom. Congress, how- 
ever, was authorized to enforce the amendment "by 
appropriate legislation," and the conviction rapidly 
deepened that the civil rights of the negro must be 
protected by national law. 

The great Republican majority in the Thirty-ninth 
Congress, which met in December, 1865, contained 
an unusual number of able leaders. Among the 
Senators were William Pitt Fessenden, of Maine; 
Charles Sumner, of Massachusetts; George F. Ed- 
munds, of Vermont; and John Sherman, of Ohio. 
The membership of the House included Thaddeus 
Stevens and William D. Kelley, of Pennsylvania; 
Henry L. Dawes and George S. Boutwell, of Massa- 
chusetts; James G. Blaine, of Maine; Justin S. Mor- 
rill, of Vermont; Roscoe Conkling, of New York; 
William B. Allison, of Iowa; and James A. Garfield 
and Rutherford B. Hayes, of Ohio, the latter serving 
for the first time. Early in February, 1866, a new 
Freedmen's Bureau bill, greatly enlarging the scope 
and strengthening the powers of the existing bureau, 
was passed and sent to the President. The bill vir- 
tually put the negroes under the military protection 
of the United States, and authorized interference on 

548 



RECONSTRUCTION 

their behalf in all cases in which their civil rights 
were involved. Johnson, in a strong, well-reasoned 
message, vetoed the bill, and an attempt to pass it 
over the veto failed. The principal objections to the 
bill were that the new machinery which it provided 
was unnecessarily elaborate and expensive, and that 
the powers given to the bureau amounted to the es- 
tablishment of military rule in districts where there 
was no war. Johnson could not stop here, however, 
but in a public speech denounced the course of Con- 
gress. He soon had a measure of much more far- 
reaching importance, and with much more powerful 
support, to consider. On April 9th Congress passed 
a bill " to protect all persons in the United States 
in their civil rights and furnish the means of their 
vindication." The bill declared that "all persons 
born in the United States, and not subject to any 
foreign power, excluding Indians not taxed," are 
citizens of the United States; and that "such citi- 
zens, of every race and color, without regard to any 
previous condition of slavery or involuntary servi- 
tude, . . . shall have the same right, in every State 
and Territory in the United States, to make and en- 
force contracts, to sue, be parties, and give evidence, 
to inherit, purchase, lease, sell, hold, and convey real 
and personal property, and to full and equal benefit 
of all laws and proceedings for the security of person 
and property, as is enjoyed by white citizens, and 
shall be subject to like punishment, pains, and penal- 
ties, and to none other, any law, statute, ordinance, 
regulation, or custom to the contrary notwithstand- 
ing." The penalty for violation of the act might be 
a fine of a thousand dollars or imprisonment for a year; 
or both; and the army and navy might be used if 

549 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

necessary to enforce the act. Thoroughgoing as was 
the act, it was doubtless a logical necessity in view of 
the drift of southern legislation, and unquestionably 
within the constitutional competency of Congress. 
Johnson, however, though reported to favor the bill 
while it was being considered, inadvisedly vetoed 
it. The veto was overridden by large majorities in 
both Houses. The native-born negro, so lately a 
slave, was now a citizen, with civil rights identical in 
terms with those of the whites. 

But the Civil Rights act, being only a statute, 
might be repealed at any time, and there was well- 
grounded fear lest the admission of southern mem- 
bers, most of them opposed to the RepubHcan policy 
which was now rapidly being unfolded, would re- 
verse the party majority in Congress. The only way, 
apparently, to prevent this was further to amend 
the Constitution so as to protect the negro as a citi- 
zen, and practically force the States to make him a 
voter. There was in this a mixture of belief in the 
civilizing influence of the suffrage and of the ability 
of the negro to use the ballot wisely, and of convic- 
tion that further protection of the negro was neces- 
sary; but the desire for party supremacy was at 
least as great as the humanitarian motive. The 
Fourteenth Amendment was agreed upon in June, 
t866, and submitted to the States for ratification. 
The amendment defined citizenship of the United 
States and forbade State encroachment upon it; 
made a new basis of apportionment of members of 
the House of Representatives; provided for the re- 
duction of the representation of any State which 
should deny, "except for participation in rebellion 
or other crime," the right of citizens of the United 

S50 



RECONvSTRUCTION 

States to vote in federal or State elections ; debarred 
from office former federal or State officials who had 
aided the Confederate cause ; and declared that, while 
the validity of the public debt of the United States 
should not be questioned, the entire debt incurred in 
aid of the Confederacy should be held "illegal and 
void." A supplementary act continuing the f reed- 
men's bureau for two years with enlarged powers, 
but without the objectionable features of the earlier 
bill which Johnson had vetoed, was also passed, not- 
withstanding the objections of the President. 

The legislature of Tennessee promptly ratified the 
Fourteenth Amendment, and July 24, 1866, the State 
was formally restored "to her former proper, prac- 
tical relations to the Union." The amendment was 
rejected, however, by Virginia, North Carolina, South 
Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, 
Louisiana, and Texas, as well as by Delaware, Mary- 
land, and Kentucky. California did not act on it, 
and the legislatures of New Jersey and Ohio rescinded 
their ratifications. It seemed not unlikely that, 
with such wide-spread opposition in different parts of 
the country, the proposed amendment might fail of 
adoption. To prevent such a disaster, it was deter- 
mined to make the acceptance of the amendment a 
further condition of the restoration of the late seceded 
States. On March 2, 1867, Congress passed the 
first of the so-called Reconstruction Acts. The ten 
States were divided into five military districts, 
with an officer not lower in rank than brigadier- 
general in command of each. The commander was 
to maintain law and order, and might, if he chose, 
establish military courts for the purpose. Whenever 
a convention, chosen by the people of the State with- 

551 



HISTORY OP THE UNITED STATES 

out regard to race or color, should have drawn up a 
constitution which granted the suffrage to negroes on 
the same terms as to whites, and the constitution had 
been adopted by popular vote, the State, with the 
approval of Congress, might be admitted to the Union, 
provided the legislature had ratified the Fourteenth 
Amendment, and the amendment had also become 
a part of the Constitution of the United States. 
Until such time, any civil government in the State 
was to be regarded as provisional only. 

No more remarkable legislation was ever enacted 
by Congress. For the purpose of compelling the 
South to give the ballot to the negro, a military gov- 
ernment was established, with military courts in place 
of civil at the discretion of the commander; negroes 
were to be given the franchise, at first by Congres- 
sional command, eventually by a State constitution 
on whose acceptance the negroes were themselves to 
vote; a proposed amendment not yet a part of the 
Constitution of the United States was to be ratified, 
although any other State might reject it if it saw fit; 
and even then the State which had done all these 
things was to be kept out of the Union until enough 
other States had approved the amendment to make 
up the necessary three-fourths majority. Johnson 
vetoed the bill, but it was at once passed over the veto. 

Between the President and Congress, holding as 
they did diametrically opposed theories of recon- 
struction, there had by this time developed a serious 
breach. Johnson, unfortunately, was not wise enough 
to see that, in a controversy between the Executive 
and the legislature, the legislature is pretty certain 
to win in the long run, and his course was such as to 
make the outcome only the more inevitable. The 

552 



RECONSTRUCTION 

State governments which had been established under 
the authority of the President were in the hands of 
Southern whites, who had availed themselves of the 
amnesty which the President had proclaimed. South- 
em legislation still discriminated sharply against the 
negro. Northern white men who had gone to the 
South after the close of the war — "carpet-baggers," 
as they were called — found themselves objects of 
suspicion, and there were startling stories of out- 
rages against persons and property. A riot in New 
Orleans on July 30th, following an illegal attempt to 
reconvene a constitutional convention which had ad- 
journed in 1864, had resulted in the killing or wound- 
ing of some two hundred persons, most of them 
negroes. It was easy for Republicans to say that 
the " rebels" were again in the saddle, and that John- 
son's policy was breeding, not peace, but lawlessness. 
In August and September, 1866, Johnson made a 
journey in the North — popularly dubbed " swinging 
around the circle ' ' — and in his speeches not only de- 
fended his course, but indulged in coarse and bitter 
attacks on his opponents and the " radical Congress." 
In the excited state of public feeling such a tour was 
extremely unwise, and especially so for a President 
who, like Johnson, could not keep his temper or his 
dignity in public speech, and who had in no part of 
the Union any particular popular support. The Re- 
publican national committee issued an address set- 
ting forth the grounds of the dispute between the 
President and Congress. The fall elections were a 
triumph for the Republicans, and with this mandate 
they entered vigorously upon the policy of which the 
Reconstruction act of March 2, 1867, already men- 
tioned, was the first fruits. 
36 553 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

It was felt to be necessary to curb the President 
as well as the South, though in so doing Congress 
rode rough-shod over constitutional restraints, and 
in the end brought discredit upon itself and the politi- 
cal party that controlled it. On the same day that 
the Reconstruction act became law, the Tenure of 
Office act deprived the President of the power of 
removing persons from office without the consent of 
the Senate — a power which had been recognized as a 
constitutional privilege ever since the foundation of 
the government. Even the cabinet officers, the in- 
timate personal advisers of the President, were by the 
act allowed to hold office until a month after the ex- 
piration of the Presidential term. An incidental re- 
sult of the act was the development of a practice 
called "Senatorial courtesy," under which federal 
appointments from any State are made to depend on 
the approval of the Senator from that State. A pro- 
vision in the Army Appropriation bill, passed on the 
same day, virtually deprived the President of the 
command of the army, and disbanded the militia in 
the late rebellious States. The former act was passed 
over a veto, the latter was signed under protest in 
order to save the appropriations. There is little to 
be said for either the constitutionality or the ex- 
pediency of these measures, although there were many 
who felt that the danger to the country was so ex- 
treme as to justify them. The Territories and the 
District of Columbia were given universal — that is, 
negro — suffrage. Nebraska, with the requirement 
of negro suffrage, was admitted as a State, also over 
the veto, but Colorado, which also had appHed, was 
kept out until 1876. A second Reconstruction act, 
enlarging and elaborating the provisions of the first, 

5=;4 



RECONSTRUCTION 

was passed March 23d. The military commanders, 
who throughout this trying period acted with praise- 
worthy moderation and discretion, had difficulty in 
interpreting the acts, and executive instructions ex- 
plaining them were presently issued, all the mem- 
bers of the cabinet except Stanton, the Secretary of 
War, approving. Congress, however, adjudged the 
instructions a serious limitation on the efficiency of 
the acts, as indeed they were, and on July 19th put in 
force a third Reconstruction act interpreting the 
other two, and adding to the powers of the com- 
manders. To both of these measur&s Johnson inter- 
posed his veto, but without avail. His character had 
ceased to carry weight and his arguments were un- 
heeded. 

The Tenure of Office act allowed the President, 
during a recess of Congress, to suspend from office 
any official ,> guilty of misconduct or incapable of 
properly performing his duties. On August 12th 
Johnson suspended Stanton, the Secretary of War, 
and appointed General Grant to perform the duties 
of the office ad interim. Stanton, a capable official 
of narrow mind, had for some time been aggres- 
sively out of sympathy with the President and most 
of the cabinet, and, had he been governed by a 
common sense of propriety, should long since have 
resigned. A request for his resignation, made by the 
President a few days before his suspension, had been 
" contemptuously refused." Congress had adjourned 
on July 20th to November 21st; and as a suspension 
from office could by law continue only until the next 
session thereafter, the question was sure to come up 
again soon. Stanton was confident of Republican 
support, and appears to have been a ready instru- 

555 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

ment in the hands of the radical' Republican leaders 
for the furtherance of their designs against the Presi- 
dent. 

While the overthrow of the President was thus 
preparing in Congress, the Reconstruction acts were 
being put into operation in the South. Attempts to 
invoke the interposition of the Supreme Court failed. 
When the registration of voters was completed, it 
appeared that in South Carolina, Florida, Alabama, 
Louisiana, and Mississippi the negroes were in a ma- 
jority, while in the remaining States the white ma- 
jority was small. It must be remembered that a large 
proportion of the leading Southerners, being unable 
to take the oath prescribed by the Reconstruction 
acts, were still disfranchised, so that "poor whites," 
" carpet - baggers," " scalawags" — southern whites 
who acted politically with the freedmen— and negroes 
formed the larger part of the electorate. In every 
State substantial majorities in favor of the conven- 
tions which were to revise the constitutions were re- 
corded at the elections. Most of the members of the 
conventions were negroes or men of little political 
experience, and the constitutions which they drew up 
were radical in their provisions regulating the suffrage 
and defining the legal and social rights of the negroes. 
The votes on the adoption of the constitutions were 
accompanied by much fraud and "repeating," dis- 
honest practices being facilitated by the fact that 
State officers were voted for at the same time. 

The Reconstruction acts required, for the adoption 
of a new State constitution, the affirmative vote of a 
majority of the registered voters. In Alabama, the 
first State to vote, enough voters stayed away from 
the polls to reduce the total vote below the required 

556 



RECONSTRUCTION 

proportion, with the result that the constitution was 
rejected. Thereupon Congress passed an act pro- 
viding that a constitution should be held to have 
been adopted if a majority of those who voted had 
voted in favor of it ; and this act was applied to the 
election already held in Alabama, and to the election 
in Arkansas held after the bill became law, but before 
its passage was known in that State. By the end 
of May, r868, reconstructed constitutions had been 
ratified in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, 
Florida, and Louisiana. In Mississippi the constitu- 
tion was rejected. 

Before the new constitutions were acted upon the 
struggle between Congress and President Johnson 
had reached its culmination. On January 7, 1867, 
James M. Ashley, a Representative from Ohio, im- 
peached the President of high crimes and mis- 
demeanors, charging him with "a usurpation of 
power and violation of law," in that he had used 
corruptly the powers of appointment, pardon, and 
veto, "corruptly disposed of public property of the 
United States," "corruptly interfered in elections," 
and " committed acts which, in contemplation of the 
Constitution, are high crimes and misdemeanors." 
The charges were referred to the Committee on the 
judiciary for investigation, but it was not until No- 
vember 25th, after the recess, that a report sustaining 
the charges was made. The report was then dis- 
agreed to, and the matter referred to the Committee 
on Reconstruction. The Senate, as had been an- 
ticipated, had refused to approve of the suspension of 
Stanton the previous August, and Stanton had re- 
sumed his duties as Secretary of War. On Feb- 
ruary I, 1868, Johnson, believing the Tenure of 

557 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

Office act to be unconstitutional, and not unwill- 
ing to put it to a test, removed Stanton, and appoint- 
ed Lorenzo Thomas, adjutant -general of the army, 
as secretary ad interim. This action Stanton, with 
a curious sense of official propriety, promptly com- 
municated to the House, and on the next day a reso- 
lution of impeachment was reported by the Commitee 
on Reconstruction and agreed to. The trial before 
the Senate began March 30th, Chief -justice Chase pre- 
siding. The prosecution on the part of the House 
was conducted by "managers," prominent among 
whom was Benjamin F. Butler, of Massachusetts, an 
able, coarse, vituperative criminal lawyer. Johnson 
was represented by able counsel, among them William 
M. Evarts and Benjamin R. Curtis. The charges, 
eleven in number, chiefly concerned Johnson's al- 
leged violation of law and the Constitution and usur- 
pation of power in the removal of Stanton. In ad- 
dition, there were charges of infractions of official 
propriety based upon inflammatory speeches in which 
Johnson had denounced Congress and its policy. So 
far as the charges related to constitutional matters, 
they were not novel, but had been foreshadowed in 
the debate on the veto of the Civil Rights bill two 
years before. 

The trial continued until May 1 2th. As it went on, 
the Republican leaders saw that the charges would 
probably not be sustained. Little as the country at 
large respected or cared for Johnson, people were 
coming to realize that it was a serious matter to im- 
peach the President of the United States; and this 
feeling, together with the able arguments of Johnson's 
counsel — in striking contrast to the abusive language 
of the prosecution — caused a strong reaction in his 

558 



RECONSTRUCTION 

favor. Of all the dangers which heated imagination 
or partisan zeal could conjure as likely to follow a 
verdict of acquittal, the possible use by the President 
of the military power to usurp authority and wreak 
vengeance on his enemies was the only one which 
could have any popular appeal ; and the reported in- 
tention of Johnson to nominate General J. M. Scho- 
field, an able soldier and conservative man, to succeed 
Stanton, did much to quiet apprehension. On May 
1 6th a vote was taken on the eleventh article of the 
charges, the one on which there was thought to be 
most likelihood of agreement. The vote was 35 
"guilty," 19 "not guilty" — less than the two-thirds 
required by the Constitution. Ten days later votes 
on the second and third articles showed similar re- 
sults. Thereupon the Senate as a court adjourned, 
and the great impeachment trial was at an end. Stan- 
ton at once resigned and General Schofield took his 
place. 

So far as Johnson was concerned, the acquittal 
was a fruitless victory. He had not, indeed, been 
found guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors as 
charged, but he had failed to commend to the sup- 
port of any considerable number of people either his 
motives or his policy. Read in the cooler atmosphere 
of the present time, the constitutional arguments of 
his veto messages are seen to be in large part sound, 
and a juster appreciation of their merits has served 
somewhat to rehabilitate his reputation. There can 
be little doubt, however, that reconstruction was 
properly a legislative rather than an executive func- 
tion, and that Congress, grossly as it abused its power 
both before and after the impeachment trial, was 
correct in thinking that Johnson's policy, if persisted 

559 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

in, would prevent such a political restoration of the 
South as would stand the test of time. 

With the assurance of no further effective opposi- 
tion from the President, Congress pushed on its work. 
On June 22, 1868, Arkansas, having ratified the Four- 
teenth Amendment, was admitted to representation 
in Congress. Three days later representation was 
promised to North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, 
Florida, and Alabama, whenever they should ratify 
the amendment, a condition which all fulfilled in the 
course of a month. In each of these cases, however, 
it was stipulated as a fundamental condition that 
the constitution of the State should never be so 
changed as "to deprive any citizen or class of citi- 
zens of the United States of the right to vote who 
are entitled to vote by the constitution herein recog- 
nized." This was a foreshadowing of the Fifteenth 
Amendment, but it was also an interference with 
the right of a State, unquestioned hitherto, to give 
the suffrage on terms of its own making. Even in 
the North the negro did not have at this time, in 
all the States, the full franchise, and there was no 
demand for its extension. Johnson wrote able vetoes 
of both bills, but Congress trod them under foot. 
Virginia, Mississippi, and Texas continued to be gov- 
erned under martial law. On July 28th a procla- 
mation by Secretary of State Seward declared the 
Fourteenth Amendment in force. 

The Presidential election of 1868 promised a sharp 
struggle. The Republicans were bound to stand by 
their reconstruction policy and negro suffrage. They 
were also pledged to the prompt payment of the 
national debt and the abolition of unnecessary taxes. 
The continued premium on gold and the high price 

560 



RECONSTRUCTION 

of United States bonds, whose interest was payable 
in gold, had called out various proposals for payment 
of the bonds which would " lighten the burden of the 
tax-payer at the cost of a virtual breach of faith on 
the part of the government." A proposition to pay 
the bonds in "greenbacks" found favor with many 
Democrats in the West, but the party as a whole was 
weakened by its war record and the unpopularity of 
President Johnson, and by the establishment of Re- 
publican control in the South through the Reconstruc- 
tion acts. 

On May 20th, four days after the first vote of the 
Senate on the impeachment charges, the Republican 
conv^ention met at Chicago. There was general 
agreement upon General Grant as the candidate 
for President, not because he was a Republican, but 
because of his brilliant military record, the prom- 
inent part he had been forced to take in the contro- 
versy between President Johnson and Congress, and 
popular confidence in his ability and integrity. The 
Republicans have always made much of soldier can- 
didates, and they now had a strong one. Amid 
great enthusiasm, the entire vote of the convention 
was given for Grant on the first ballot. The nomi- 
nee for Vice-president was Schuyler Colfax, of Indiana, 
Speaker of the House of Representatives. The plat- 
form endorsed the Reconstruction acts, denounced 
repudiation as a "national crime," scored Johnson in 
unmeasured terms, and commended the "spirit of 
magnanimity and forbearance" with which Confed- 
erates " are received back into the communion of the 
loyal people." On the crucial question of negro suf- 
frage, however, the platform was evasive, the asser- 
tion that the "guarantee by Congress of equal suf- 

561 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

frage to all loyal men at the South was demanded 
by every consideration of public safety, of gratitude, 
and of justice, and must be maintained," being quali- 
fied by the statement that "the question of suffrage 
in all the loyal States properly belongs to the people 
of those States." It was difficult to see that negro 
suffrage in States in which there were few negroes, 
as was the case in the majority of the States of the 
Union, was a question of great moment. 

The Democratic convention at New York framed 
a platform which denounced the reconstruction policy 
of Congress, favored the payment of the public debt 
in "the lawful money of the United States" where 
payment in coin was not in terms required, and de- 
manded a long list of reforms. There was a strong 
following for George H. Pendleton, of Ohio, a leading 
"peace Democrat" in 1864, and now a "greenback" 
champion, but on the twenty-second ballot there 
was a "stampede" for Horatio Seymour, of New 
York, and he was unanimously nominated. The 
candidate for Vice-president was General Francis P. 
Blair, Jr., of Missouri. The electoral vote was 214 
for Grant and 80 for Seymour, Grant's majority of 
the popular vote being about three hundred and 
nine thousand. An inspection of the returns, how- 
ever, showed that it was to the reconstructed States 
of the South, from which the Democratic vote 
had been largely eliminated, and the excluded States 
of Virginia, Mississippi, and Texas, which would 
have gone Democratic had they been allowed to vote, 
that the Republicans principally owed their success, 
rather than to any marked popular endorsement by 
the Republican States which had a free ballot and a 
fair count. 

562 



RECONSTRUCTION 

It is pleasant to turn from Johnson's disastrous 
experience in domestic affairs to two successes in the 
field of diplomacy. Early in the Civil War the Em- 
peror of the French, Napoleon III., hopeful of regain- 
ing in America the prestige which he was rapidly 
losing in Europe, sought to establish in Mexico, just 
then in revolution, a kingdom for the Archduke Maxi- 
milian of Austria. While the war lasted, the pro- 
test of the United States against this interference 
with the affairs of an American state was not enforced, 
but on the conclusion of the war a significant move- 
ment of troops towards the Mexican border was fol- 
lowed by the withdrawal of the French. Maximilian 
chivalrously elected to remain, but was captured, 
tried, and shot. Less spectacular, but equally suc- 
cessful, was the negotiation with Russia which re- 
sulted in the purchase of Alaska. The visible friend- 
liness of Russia for the United States during the war 
bred a kindly feeling towards that country, and the 
acquisition of Alaska was generally approved, though 
not without criticism of the price, $7,200,000, as too 
high. Seward, the Secretary of State, could con- 
gratulate himself on having done Russia a good turn 
at the same time that he had rid the United States 
of a European neighbor. 

There was no difficulty in interpreting the vote in 
November, 1868, as an endorsement of the Repub- 
lican policy, and the work of reconstruction was 
pushed with renewed vigor. It would be tedious to 
follow in detail the steps in the process where no new 
principle was at issue. In April, 1869, President 
Grant was authorized to submit to popular vote the 
new constitutions of Virginia, Mississippi, and Texas, 
and by the end of March, 1870, the restoration of those 

563 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

States was complete. The case of Georgia, to which 
representation in Congress had been again denied, 
was more complicated, but on July 15, 1870, that State 
also was admitted, and the Union was once more per- 
fect. In each of these States the ratification of the 
Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution, forbidding 
the denial or abridgment by the United States or by 
any State of the right of citizens of the United States 
to vote on account of race, color, or previous condi- 
tion of servitude, had been made a prerequisite to 
restoration. The Fifteenth Amendment did not, of 
course, actually confer the suffrage upon any one, but 
it completed the process which the Fourteenth Amend- 
ment had begun, and was, in fact, made necessary by 
the failure of the franchise section of the latter amend- 
ment to secure for the negro the political rights which 
the Republican party was determined he should 
have. 

The South and the Constitution had now alike 
been reconstructed. Would the new Constitution 
prove sufficient to keep the South in the appointed 
path? 

The condition of the South during the four years 
of Grant's first administration was historically unique. 
No sooner were the reconstructed State governments 
established, with the army of the United States at 
hand for their protection and support, than they be- 
gan a policy which amounted to a systematic looting 
of the States. Bonded debts, amounting in a few 
years to nearly $300,000,000 for the whole South, 
were piled up with reckless disregard of taxable 
wealth or future ability to pay. Georgia, with but 
$125,000,000 of property on which to levy, shortly had 
a debt of one-fifth of that sum. The country had not 

564 



RECONSTRUCTION 

recovered from the effects of bad crops in 1866 and 
1867, and general economic reorganization was slow. 
The ignorant freedmen and poor whites, led in most 
instances by unscrupulous "carpet-baggers" and 
"scalawags," voted enormous sums for refurnishing 
legislative chambers and public offices, for free res- 
taurants, bars, and carriages, and for public printing. 
Valuable franchises were given away or sold for a 
song, and became a fertile source of corruption. No 
such travesty of government or blatant debauchery 
of official life had ever been known in America, and 
the army officers were powerless to check or prevent 
it. The situation was at its worst in those States in 
which the negro population was the largest. Yet the 
refusal in many cases of the better class of whites to 
take part in elections, even when permitted by law to 
do so, was in part responsible for the dreadful con- 
ditions which obtained, while factional disputes and 
personal rivalries long prevented joint action by those 
who were alone, at the moment, fit to rule. Not un- 
til 1874 had the whites of the South sufficiently com- 
bined for self-defence to begin to overthrow the " car- 
pet-bag" governments and recover control. To aid 
in this work, the secret society known as the Ku Klux 
Klan, organized about 1866, was formed to terrorize 
negroes and their white sympathizers. "Its mem- 
bers whipped, plundered, burned, abducted, im- 
prisoned, tortured, and murdered, for the prime pur- 
pose of keeping the negroes from exercising suffrage 
and holding office. They were protected by many 
respectable people who would not have participated 
personally in their nefarious work. And they had 
confederates everywhere who, upon the witness-stand 
and in the jury-box, would perjure themselves to pre- 

565 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

vent their conviction and punishment." * It was the 
natural, but utterly lawless, protest of a people against 
conditions which may well have seemed intolerable. 

Congress thought of no remedy save further coer- 
cion. In May, 1870, it passed a stringent act to en- 
force the Fifteenth Amendment, with severe penal- 
ties for those who should in any manner hinder or 
interfere with the exercise of the siiffrage by any one 
qualified to vote. Persons banding together, or go- 
ing in disguise upon a publ c highway, or the premises 
of another, with intent to violate the act, were ren- 
dered liable to a fine of five thousand dollars or im- 
prisonment for ten years, or both, and in addition 
were to be disqualified from holding any office under 
the United States. This act proving insufficient, it 
was supplemented by another in February, 187 1, 
providing for the appointment, whenever requested 
by two citizens, of supervisors of federal elections in 
any city or town of more than twenty thousand in- 
habitants. There could be no question of the right 
of Congress to regulate the election of its own mem- 
bers; but since, in order to avoid the inconvenience 
and expense of frequent elections. State and Con- 
gressional officials were commonly chosen at the same 
time, the supervision provided by this statute of 
187 1 would in practice affect much more than the 
choice of members of Congress. In June, 1872, the 
scope of the act was further widened. In April, 187 1 , 
came an act to enforce the Fourteenth Amendment, 
commonly called the " Ku Klux act." This act 
aimed especially to prevent and punish the work of 
such organizations as the Ku Klux Klan, and to pre- 

* Burgess, Reconstruction and the Constitution, 251. 
566 



RECONSTRUCTION 

vent the intimidation of judges, jurors, and other pub- 
lic officials. Wherever the execution of law was in- 
terrupted by violence or any unlawful combination, 
the President was authorized to proclaim martial law 
and employ the army and navy to restore order. 

With the passage of these great acts, the legislative 
history of reconstruction, so far as it relates to the po- 
litical reorganization of the South and the establish- 
ment of negro suffrage, comes practically to an end. 
Every State which, ten years before, had joined the 
movement for secession had been compelled to bow 
in complete submission to the will of Congress, and 
had been restored to the Union only upon the accept- 
ance of rigorous terms from whose binding obligation 
there seemed to be no escape save through deliberate 
bad faith. So far as law and military power could go, 
the political rights of the negroes had been placed on 
a footing of perfect equality with those of the whites. 
Negroes sat in both Houses of Congress. The seat 
formerly occupied by Jefferson Davis was held by a 
black man. Republican legislation had made a clean 
sweep of the old South and its peculiar institutions, 
and called the result justice and peace. 

The failure of the Republicans, at the end of seven 
years after the close of the war, to restore normal con- 
ditions in the South, or even to maintain government 
and order save by military force, gave the Democrats 
a chance to taunt them with incompetency. On the 
other hand, the anarchical excesses of negro and " car- 
pet-bag" domination bred wide -spread disaffection 
even within the Republican ranks. There were other 
grounds of disaffection also. Grant was not a great 
statesman, nor had he the acuteness and foresight of 
the experienced politician. Very early in his term 

567 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

he had shaken off the principal restrictions of the 
Tenure of Office act, but in his administration of the 
federal patronage he played directly into the hands 
of " bosses," whose power he helped greatly to develop. 
A board of civil service commissioners to examine ap- 
plicants for minor offices was in existence from 1872 
to 1875, and had the support of the President, but 
Congress was hostile, and the appropriation for its 
support was discontinued. Grant had also suffered a 
prolonged attack of the ' ' expansion ' ' fever, and had 
done his best to bring about the annexation of the 
island of Dominica, or San Domingo. A treaty of 
annexation was concluded in November, 1869, and in 
the early part of 187 1 three commissioners were sent 
to report on conditions in the island ; but the sharp 
division of public opinion in the United States com- 
pelled a reluctant abandonment of the project. Bet- 
ter success attended the prosecution of claims against 
Great Britain on account of injuries to American 
commerce inflicted by Confederate armed vessels fitted 
out in English ports. The great Treaty of Wash- 
ington, in 1871, referred these claims to arbitration, 
and laid down for the government of the tribunal 
some stringent rules regarding the duties of neutrals. 
The tribunal, sitting at Geneva, awarded the United 
States $15,500,000 in satisfaction of its claims. 

The financial controversy was also growing. In 
March, 1869, Congress had again declared its purpose 
to pay all the debt of the United States in coin, save 
where payment in some other lawful money than 
gold and silver had been authorized when the debt 
was contracted, and to resume specie payment "at 
the earliest practicable period." It should be remem- 
bered in this connection that a large part of the bonds 

568 



RECONSTRUCTION 

issued did not specify the kind of money in which the 
bonds were to be paid. The volume of national bank- 
notes was increased, and some inequalities in its dis- 
tribution among the States removed, and a com- 
prehensive plan for refunding the national debt was 
adopted. To those who had embraced the "green- 
back " heresy these financial measures were, of course, 
highly unsatisfactory; and the attitude of the Su- 
preme Court, which, having decided in 1869 that the 
action of Congress in making the "greenbacks " legal 
tender was unconstitutional, in 1870, with a reor- 
ganized membership, reversed its decision and held 
the legal - tender provision constitutional, roused 
rather than allayed discontent. 

The strongest dissolvent within the Republican 
party, however, was the growing volume of reports 
of outrage and misgovernment in the South. Promi- 
nent Republicans like Horace Greeley, editor of the 
New York Tribune, the leading Republican news- 
paper in the country, Charles Francis Adams, and 
Carl Schurz, protested against a policy which brought 
only anarchy and political corruption; and Sumner, 
who had been deprived of the chairmanship of the 
Senate Committee on Foreign Relations because of 
his opposition to the San Domingo project, approved 
the protest. On May i, 1872, a convention of Liberal 
Republicans, as those who felt compelled to act out- 
side the regular Republican organization were called, 
met at Cincinnati. The platform denounced Grant's 
administration as "guilty of wanton disregard of the 
laws of the land," demanded a reform of the civil ser- 
vice, pledged the party to the maintenance of the 
Union and of "emancipation and enfranchisement," 
called for the restoration of State and local self- 
37 569 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

government without military support, denounced re- 
pudiation, and championed the early resumption of 
specie payment. The platform was strong, but it 
was weakened badly by the nomination of the able, 
erratic Greeley for President. The disappointment 
of those who had hoped for a stronger candidate was 
drowned by the cry of "Anybody to beat Grant." 
The Republicans, confident of success, renominated 
Grant on a platform which endorsed, both as a whole 
and in detail, the Republican policy of Congress and 
President. The demand for civil service reform was 
acquiesced in so far as was possible "without prac- 
tically creating a life - tenure of office" — a saving 
clause whose principle was to be many times pro- 
claimed in subsequent years. The Democrats, di- 
vided in opinion and following, but hopeful of cover- 
ing their war record by the success of "greenback- 
ism," nominated Greeley on the Cincinnati platform; 
but their support of Greeley was at best half-hearted, 
while frank dissatisfaction was openly expressed by 
many. Under the circumstances, the success of the 
Republicans was assured. Grant received 286 elec- 
toral votes against 63 for the combined opposition. 
Greeley died — partly, it was said, of disappointment 
— a few days after the election, and the Democratic 
electoral votes were scattered, the larger number 
being cast for Thomas A. Hendricks, of Indiana. 
Three votes of Georgia given for Greeley were re- 
jected by Congress. Louisiana, thanks to two re- 
turning boards and two sets of returns, lost its vote 
altogether. 

The success of the Republicans was due far more 
to dissensions among the Democrats and the unwill- 
ingness of the North to trust the administration of 

570 



RECONSTRUCTION 

affairs to Democratic hands than to any wide-spread 
approval of the RepubHcan programme. During the 
next two years, as one southern State after another 
freed itself from negro and "carpet-bag" control, 
the conviction deepened that the Republican leaders 
were too radical, so far as reconstruction was con- 
cerned, to represent the better opinion of the party, 
and that a change was advisable. In various ways 
the administration had been discredited. The years 
from 1869 to 1872 were, in general, years of pros- 
perity. Harvests were good, trade flourished, rail- 
roads multiplied, and a steady stream of immigration 
poured into the country from Europe. The popula- 
tion of 38,500,000 in 1870 showed an increase of 
seven millions since i860. But the tide turned. A 
disastrous commercial crisis, brought on by specula- 
tion and excessive railroad building, began in 1873, 
and its effects continued some five years. There were 
ugly revelations of corruption in the civil service at 
Washington and elsewhere, indicating the reign of the 
spoilsman. The "whiskey ring in the West show- 
ed a formidable conspiracy to defraud the govern- 
ment of revenue from internal taxation. There were 
extensive frauds in the Indian service, and disastrous 
Indian wars in consequence. Grant was still, in the 
popular mind, the honest soldier, but public patience 
with the politicians who controlled him was fast 
reaching an end. The State and Congressional elec- 
tions of 1874 were an emphatic rebuke to the party in 
power. In the Forty-third Congress, which met in 
December, 1873, the Republicans had a majority in 
both Houses, and in the House of Representatives had 
198 of the 291 members. In the Forty-fourth Con- 
gress there was a diminished Republican majority in 

571 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

the Senate, while of the 290 members of the House, 
182 were Democrats. 

There was much important financial legislation, 
however, during Grant's second term. In 1873 the 
coinage laws were revised and the standard silver 
dollar of 412^ grains omitted from the list of coins — ' 
a change which led later to the popular charge that 
the act aimed to "demonetize" silver, and caused 
the act to be branded, by silver partisans, as the 
" crime of 1873." The limitation on the circulation 
of national banks was removed, and the bank-note 
issue allowed to adjust itself more readily to the 
business needs of the country. The trade dollar lost 
its legal-tender character, and presently ceased to be 
coined. Congress did, indeed, coquette with the de- 
mand for inflation, and in 1874 passed a bill increas- 
ing the volume of "greenbacks," but Grant was wise 
enough to veto the bill. In 1875 provision was made 
for the resumption of specie payment on January i, 
1879, and for the retirement of the greenbacks until 
their amount was reduced to $300,000,000. Tariff 
duties were somewhat reduced in 1870, and again in 
1872. The internal revenue duties had been already 
several times adjusted. 

The demand for further protection of the civil 
rights of the negro culminated in the passage, March 
I, 1875, of an act decreeing to all persons in the United 
States "the full and equal enjoyment of the accom- 
modations, advantages, faciHties, and privileges of 
inns, public conveyances on land or water, theatres, 
and other places of public amusement"; but no 
particular attempt to enforce the act was ever 
made, and equal privileges have continued to be, 
in many places, denied. Sumner, the framer and 

572 



RECONSTRUCTION 

advocate of the measure, had died a year before its 
passage. 

All signs pointed to a far more bitter and more 
evenly balanced struggle for party supremacy in the 
Presidential election of 1876 than had been the case 
since the war. Many Democrats who had hitherto 
acted with the Republicans, because they believed 
the war, and the political issues growing out of it, to 
be of paramount importance, had begun to return 
to their former party allegiance, and could not longer 
be counted upon to vote the Republican ticket. 
Many voters, especially those on whom party obliga- 
tions of any sort bore lightly, felt that the Republican 
party had outlived its usefulness, and pointed to its 
vacillating and unsatisfactory treatment of the cur- 
rency problem as conclusive proof. The painful reve- 
lations of corruption in the public service alienated 
many. The appearance in Congress of an increasing 
number of propositions to amend the Constitution 
so as to provide for the choice of President and Vice- 
president by popular vote, was an interesting indica- 
tion of Democratic change, testifying particularly to 
the growing power of the West. Men were weary of 
reading and hearing about "the South," "carpet- 
baggers," reconstruction, and the rights of the negro. 
It offended them that their orators should persist in 
"waving the bloody shirt." Grave social, commer- 
cial, industrial, and financial problems confronted 
the country, and there was a demand for a party 
that would deal with the present and leave the dead 
to bury their dead. 

It was understood that Grant was not unwilling to 
depart from the precedent established by Washington, 
Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, and Jackson, and to of- 

573 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

fer himself as a candidate for a third term; but the 
nearly unanimous adoption by the House of Repre- 
sentatives of a resolution declaring that a third term 
"would be unwise, unpatriotic, and fraught with 
peril to our free institutions," put an end to the proj- 
ect for the time being. There was wide popular fol- 
lowing for James G. Blaine, of Maine, the leading Re- 
publican of the House, and for six years its Speaker ; 
but his statesmanship was not of the highest or purest 
order, his attitude towards the South was hostile 
rather than conciliatory, and there were charges of 
misconduct which told heavily against him. The 
Secretary of the Treasury, Benjamin H. Bristow, 
prominent for his vigorous prosecution of the " whis- 
key ring" frauds, had a strong following. Of the 
Democratic leaders, Samuel J. Tilden, Governor of 
New York, was far the ablest and the most promi- 
nent. Next to the question of the policy to be pursued 
towards the South, the most important question be- 
fore the country was that of the resumption of specie 
payment. The Greenback, or Independent National, 
party demanded the ' ' immediate and unconditional 
repeal" of the Resumption act and the establishment 
of a paper currency. The Republican platform, 
fearing to endorse the Resumption act directly, lest 
votes should thereby be lost, demanded "a continu- 
ous and steady progress to specie payment." The 
Democratic platform denounced everything that the 
Republicans had done, including the Resumption act, 
and demanded thoroughgoing reform, but on the 
currency issue offered no definite proposals. The 
Republicans nominated Rutherford B. Hayes, of 
Ohio, an able, conservative, high-minded man of 
solid rather than distinguished ability, and William 

574 



RECONSTRUCTION 

A. Wheeler, of New York. The Democrats nominated 
Tilden. 

The campaign was without distinctive features. 
The result of the election, however, showed an extraor- 
dinary and unprecedented situation. From each of 
the four States of South Carolina, Florida, Louisiana, 
and Oregon there were two sets of returns. In Oregon 
the eligibility of a RepubHcan elector was in dispute. 
In South Carolina and Florida there were charges of 
fraud and intimidation, while in Louisiana there were 
two rival governments. If the RepubHcans could 
secure the entire electoral vote of all four States, they 
would elect their candidate by a majority of one, but 
the loss of a single vote would give the election to the 
Democrats. The Republicans immediately deter- 
mined to "claim everything." The popular excite- 
ment was intense. The publication, in 1878, of cer- 
tain "cipher despatches" led to the charge that the 
Democrats had sought for a Republican elector who 
could be bribed. There was even heated talk of 
seating the Democratic candidate by force — a step 
which President Grant quietly took measures to pre- 
vent. 

On January 29, 1877, an act of Congress pro- 
vided for counting the electoral vote. After regu- 
lating the procedure of the two Houses, the act 
created an electoral commission composed of five 
Senators, five Representatives, and five justices of 
the Supreme Court, to whom all questions regarding 
disputed returns should be referred, and whose de- 
cision should be final unless both Houses agreed in 
setting it aside. The ten members of Congress chosen 
were, of course, evenly divided between the two par- 
ties, while of the four justices specified in the act, two 

575 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

were Republicans and two Democrats. The respon- 
sibility of final decision would rest, therefore, upon 
the fifth justice, who was to be chosen by the other 
four. It was supposed, while the bill was under dis- 
cussion, that the choice would fall upon Justice David 
Davis, in whose ability and impartiality there was gen- 
eral confidence. Just before the passage of the act, 
however, Davis was chosen United States Senator 
from Illinois. The remaining justices available were 
Republicans, and the choice fell upon Justice Joseph 
P. Bradley. The decisions of the commission sus- 
tained the Republican contentions, and as the Re- 
publican Senate and Democratic House took opposite 
views in each case, the decisions were not reversed. 
Hayes and Wheeler were accordingly declared elected. 
The Democrats, of course, charged their opponents 
with partisanship and fraud, and many refused to 
admit the legality of the result, but the decision was 
generally acquiesced in by the country. 

The majority of Republicans had been agreed in 
desiring a candidate who, if elected, would put an 
end to the Grant regime in the South. They found 
such a leader in President Hayes. Grant had al- 
ready begun the withdrawal of the federal troops 
from the South. Hayes shortly withdrew the re- 
mainder, and left the southern States to manage 
their political affairs without interference. The Re- 
publican governments in South Carolina, Florida, 
and Louisiana, which had been maintained only by 
military force, speedily fell, and Democratic admin- 
istrations took their place. There was once more a 
"solid South." The course of the President was 
severely criticised by the radicals, who still believed 
in blood and iron, but there are few who now doubt 

576 



RECONSTRUCTION 

that it was as wise as it was patriotic. For the continu- 
ance of military rule in any part of the country in 
time of peace there can be, under our system of gov- 
ernment, no justification, and least of all where the 
purpose is only to uphold a particular administration 
or party. Vital, too, as was the ballot to the uplifting 
of the negro race, it was better that the negro should 
be compelled to achieve political influence through 
education, industry, and a moral life than that he 
should be permanently sustained in a position of un- 
healthy and adventitious importance by federal aid. 
Military government in a democracy, in time of 
peace, is not only an intolerable anomaly, but a dan- 
gerous impediment also to the individual liberty 
upon whose free exercise the welfare of the community 
depends. It was the cardinal mistake of reconstruc- 
tion, not that it enfranchised the negro or imposed 
conditions on the readmission of the States, but that 
it systematically bred enmity between the races by 
discriminating against the whites at the same time 
that it did nothing to educate the negroes whom the 
national power had freed. It is to the lasting credit 
of President Hayes that he brought the dark period 
of coercion and restraint to an end, and left the South 
to adjust the question of political control for itself, 
subject only to the Constitution, the law, and the 
obligations of a Christian civiHzation. 



XXIV 
THE NEWEST HISTORY 

THE administration of President Hayes marks a 
transition from the period of which the Civil War 
and its resulting reconstruction of the South were 
the climax, to the period in which we now live. His- 
torical periods and social movements can never be 
very accurately bounded by dates or particular 
events, nor is there ever a complete doffing of the old 
habit and donning of the new. Political and social 
conditions which have lost their significance, and in- 
fluences which have spent their force, often continue 
to be talked about and to affect public thought and 
action after their real vitality has been dissipated, 
albeit the advent of a new time is more or less clearly 
apprehended. It was the peculiar distinction of 
Hayes's administration that it stood thus between 
the old and the new, between a closed past and an 
opening future. The great issues born of slavery, 
State rights, nullification, secession, and reconstruc- 
tion were dead, save as narrow-minded leaders, for 
the sake of making political "capital" by vicious ap- 
peal to partisan prejudices, chose to keep alive the 
memory of them. Men no longer discussed the nat- 
ure of the constitutional compact or the relative 
powers of the nation and the States. Only the Su- 
preme Court, with the lawyer's desire to avoid change 

578 



THE NEWEST HISTORY 

and make things hang together, busied itself with de- 
vising interpretations of the Constitution which would 
give an appearance of logical consistency to the acts 
of the federal government during and after the war. 
There was a solid South, but it was to be henceforth 
free from either Congressional or Executive interfer- 
ence. For more than twenty years the great prob- 
lems of the country were to be, not political or sec- 
tional, but financial, industrial, commercial, social. 
The nation was to turn to new tasks of internal re- 
organization and development, demanding primarily 
expert knowledge and administrative skill, and affect- 
ing intimately the daily Hfe of the people. Only at the 
end was the United States to fling precedent to the 
winds, and enter with youthful enthusiasm upon a 
fateful career of territorial expansion and imperial- 
istic conduct. 

There had been some striking marks of national 
progress in the past ten years. The census of 1870 
showed a population of 38,558,371, a gain of over 
seven millions since i860. The gain was, of course, 
less than it would have been but for the Civil War. 
Especially significant were the growth of the city pop- 
ulation, the rapid filling up of the West, and the large 
though fluctuating volume of foreign immigration. 
The number of immigrants, aggregating 427-833 in 
1854, had fallen as low as 89,207 in 1862; it rose un- 
steadily till 1873, when it was 459.803, and then de- 
clined till 1879, when it reached 138,469. Large as 
were these numbers, there was as yet no difficulty in 
providing for them, or, on the whole, in assimilating 
them, though before long there was to be questioning 
whether, in view of the large percentage of poor and 
ignorant arrivals, the power of assimilation was not 

579 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

being overstrained. The Union Pacific Railway was 
completed in May, 1869, and a veritable net-work of 
railroad lines was rapidly covering the country. The 
total miles built from 1869 to 1873, when the com- 
mercial panic checked construction, was about twenty 
thousand. The successful laying of an Atlantic cable 
gave telegraphic connection with Europe. The great 
Centennial Exhibition at Philadelphia, in 1876, was a 
marvellous illustration of the industrial progress of the 
United States, and for the first time afforded oppor- 
tunity for comparison between American methods 
and products and those of European countries. 
American invention in particular received a powerful 
stimulus. The total number of patents issued by 
the United States patent -office down to 1870 was 
120,573; the number issued from 1871 to 1902 was 
606,904, or more than five times as many as in the 
preceding eighty years, and nearly half the total 
number issued in the same period by all the other 
countries of the world. 

On the other hand, when President Hayes took 
office, the country was still suffering from the indus- 
trial and financial depression which followed the great 
panic of 1873. The causes of the panic were to be 
found in the overproduction of manufactured goods, 
particularly iron, consequent upon the activity in 
railroad building; the disturbance of the world's 
market for grain due to the opening of the West 
and increased acreage abroad; the demand for 
specie with which to pay the foreign debt, and the 
general inflation of prices and credit. The passage 
by Congress, January, 1875, of the act for the re- 
sumption of specie payment, did not greatly aid an 
early return to sound conditions, for a change in 

580 



THE NEWEST HISTORY 

business methods as well as in government policy 
was needed. A change for the better, however, took 
place by 1878, when the balance of foreign trade once 
more favored the United States — that is, the value 
of exports exceeded the value of imports. With this 
aid, the Secretary of the Treasury, John Sherman, 
was able to carry to completion his policy of accumu- 
lating gold by the sale of bonds, and on January i, 
1879, specie payment was quietly resumed. 

The financial question had long been one of the 
most serious issues before the country, and it was to 
go through various phases and be made the occasion 
of prolonged and heated discussion before even an 
approximate solution was reached. On the funda- 
mental economic question involved there was diver- 
sity of opinion, not only among people at large, but 
also among authorities. With regard to the proper 
relative volumes of gold and silver there was, in par- 
ticular, serious divergence of view. The great finan- 
cial and business interests as a rule urged the main- 
tenance of the gold standard, by which every dollar 
of currency issued under the authority of the United 
States was to be kept at a parity with gold. Op- 
posed to them were the bimetallists, who insisted that 
both gold and silver could and ought to be used as 
standards of value. Those who advocated the gold 
standard pointed to the example of other countries 
— gold being the universal standard in international 
exchange — and ridiculed the idea of a " double stand- 
ard" as a contradiction in terms. The silver ad- 
vocates, on the other hand, claimed with some plausi- 
bility that the world's annual production of gold was 
insufficient to meet the needs of business, and that 
in consequence there was takino- olace a decline in 

581 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

the volume of money and a general rise of prices ; and 
a wide-spread demand arose for the "free and un- 
limited coinage of silver." For this extreme course 
there was not sufficient support, but in February, 
1878 — less than a year before specie payment was 
to be resumed— the "Bland act" — so-called from its 
chief promoter, Richard P. Bland, of Missouri, a 
representative in Congress — directed the resumption 
of the coinage of the standard silver dollar, which had 
been dropped from the list of coins in 1873, to an 
amount not less than two million nor more than four 
million dollars a month. President Hayes interposed 
his veto, but large majorities in each House passed 
the bill over the veto. The act remained in force 
until July 14, 1890, by which time 378,166,000 silver 
dollars had been coined. There was also much popu- 
lar opposition to banks, and an act of May 31, 1878, 
forbade the further retirement of the legal - tender 
notes, whose place the national bank-notes would in 
part take. 

It was the great misfortune of President Hayes to 
be, for the larger part of his term, without the support 
of his party in either House of Congress. This was 
partly due to his attitude towards the South, which 
alienated radical Republicans without winning the ad- 
herence of the Democrats, and partly to his lack of 
skill in dealing with men ; but it was also due in large 
measure to the rise • of financial issues in regard to 
which neither party, and especially the Republican 
party, was ready to take a definite stand. As a con- 
sequence, Hayes was interfered with as few Presi- 
dents have been. When the Forty-sixth Congress 
met, in March, 1879, there was a Democratic major- 
ity in each House. With the object of reducing the 

582 



THE NEWEST HISTORY 

power of the Executive to control federal elections 
by repealing or amending the existing laws, legislation 
for the purpose — known as "riders" — was attached 
to several of the great appropriation bills, in hope 
that the changes would be accepted rather than stop 
the appropriations; but Hayes boldly vetoed the 
bills, and the "riders" were eventually dropped. In 
1880, however, the use of the army at the polls was 
forbidden. To the suggested necessity of civil service 
reform Congress turned a deaf ear, and no provision 
was made to regulate the electoral count so as to 
avoid another disputed election. As a consequence 
of the differences between the executive and legis- 
lative departments, Hayes's term was not fruitful of 
great issues or interesting events, but it was rather a 
time in which great issues and momentous party 
changes were preparing. 

The Republicans, in general the representatives 
of property interests and vested rights, were slow 
in adapting themselves to new conditions and in 
meeting new issues. The Democrats, in general the 
party of reform ideas, siiffered from divided coun- 
sels and showed singular incapacity for leadership. 
In the Presidential contest of 1880 nearly half of the 
delegates in the Republican convention championed 
the candidacy of General Grant, but on the thirty- 
sixth ballot the nomination was given to James A. 
Garfield, of Ohio, on a platform which recounted 
the achievements of the party, denounced the Demo- 
crats and the sohd South, and favored protec- 
tion and civil service reform. The currency ques- 
tion was not mentioned. Garfield had served with 
distinction in the Civil War and had attained promi- 
nence in Congress. The Democrats nominated Win- 

583 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

field S. Hancock, of Pennsylvania, the chief demands 
of the platform being for a return to historical Demo- 
cratic principles, " honest money, consisting of gold 
and silver, and paper convertible into coin on de- 
mand," a tariff for revenue only, civil service reform, 
and "free ships and a living chance for American 
commerce on the seas and on the land." The Green- 
back party, which had polled over a million votes in 
the State elections of 1878, demanded the issue of all 
money by the government and not by banks, the full 
legal-tender quality for all forms of money, and the 
unlimited coinage of silver as well as of gold ; opposed 
the refunding of the debt; and called for the regula- 
tion of interstate commerce and for numerous laws 
for the benefit of the laboring classes. The Presi- 
dential candidate of the party was James B. Weaver, 
of Iowa. All three platforms urged the restriction 
of Chinese immigration, which on the Pacific coast 
had attained such proportions as to interfere with 
other labor interests. A Prohibition party also held 
a convention and nominated candidates. For the 
first time in many years "the South" was not an 
issue in the election, though many southern Repub- 
licans did not vote. The popular vote showed a plu- 
rality of less than ten thousand for Garfield in a com- 
bined Democratic and Republican vote of 8,899,368, 
and a Greenback strength of only 308,578; but the 
electoral vote gave the election to the Republicans. 

At no time since the "era of good feeling" were 
party lines so indistinct, both in Congress and in the 
country, as during the years 1881-85. I^ the 
transition from old to new issues, neither party for 
the moment actively championed distinctive doc- 
trines. The legislation of Congress, though impor- 

584 



THE NEWEST HISTORY 

tant, was not in the main partisan. The situation, 
indeed, afforded ground for hope that a much-needed 
reorganization of the existing parties, or else the rise 
of a new party with a modern creed, might shortly 
come about ; but the ingrained conservatism of Ameri- 
cans in matters of political form, their aversion to 
new names and "third parties," and their preference 
for practical adjustment rather than theoretical 
soundness, kept the two historical parties in the field, 
and divided the support of the great majority of the 
voters between them. The shooting of President 
Garfield, in July, 1881, and his death the following 
September, elevated to the Presidential chair a man 
whose nomination as Vice-president had been hailed 
by many as conspicuously unfit, and whose candi- 
dacy had induced coldness rather than enthusiasm. 
Chester A. Arthur was principally known to the coun- 
try as a New York politician whom Hayes had re- 
moved from the office of collector of the port of 
New York. The circumstances of his accession to 
the high office of Chief Magistrate of the republic 
were peculiarly trying, but his conscientious and dig- 
nified course as President steadily won popular re- 
spect and commendation, and secured for him a high, 
if not a distinguished, place in the list of Presidents. 

The achievements of Congress were a curious mixt- 
ure of large and small, grave and gay. The Senate 
engaged in an unseemly partisan wrangle over the 
appointments of Garfield, in the course of which the 
New York Senators, Roscoe Conkling and Thomas C. 
Piatt, suddenly resigned. Conkling did not re-enter 
public life. The trial of Guiteau, the President's as- 
sassin, was attended with disgraceful incidents; but 
the fact that the unfortunate man was also a disap- 

,8 585 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

pointed office-seeker drew attention dramatically to 
the need of civil service reform, and on January i6, 
1883, a bill for the appointment of a Civil Service 
Commission and the establishment of a merit system 
of appointments became law. President Arthur had 
strongly recommended the measure, and during his 
administration the law was faithfully enforced. 
Stringent laws for the punishment of polygamy, which 
among the Mormons, in Utah, had become a menace 
to the national peace, and for the exclusion of Chinese 
immigrants for ten years, were also passed. A tariff 
commission in 1883 recommended a reduction of 
duties in view of the large surplus revenue, but the 
resulting tariff act, and the reduction of internal taxes, 
proved only palliatives. There were wide-spread labor 
troubles, with the rapid formation of trusts, on the 
one hand, and of labor organizations, the most prom- 
inent of them the Knights of Labor, on the other. 
With the relations between capital and labor. Con- 
gress has as yet failed to deal in any satisfactory man- 
ner, and the strike, the lockout, the boycott, and the 
black-list have continued to be resorted to by both 
parties, with disastrous consequences for the prosper- 
ity of industry and for the peace of the community. 

The failure of the tariff of 1883 to reduce effectual- 
ly the surplus revenue, joined to the defeat in the 
House of the Morrison, or "horizontal reduction," 
bill, by a combination of Republicans and protection- 
ist Democrats, made the tariff the most prominent 
issue in the Presidential campaign of 1884, and offer- 
ed a natural ground for fundamental party diver- 
gence. There could be no doubt that the manufact- 
urers who had profited by high protection sought 
the continuance of the system, and that the political 

586 



THE NEWEST HISTORY 

action of workingmen was influenced by arguments 
drawn from the alleged efl'ect of the tariff in raising 
wages. The Republicans nominated James G. Blaine, 
Garfield's Secretary of State and trusted political ad- 
viser, and now the most prominent leader of the party, 
on a platform which championed protection while 
promising reduction of revenue, urged efforts to se- 
cure international action in fixing the relative values 
of gold and silver, and favored the extension of the 
merit system " to all the grades of the service to which 
it is applicable." The nomination of Blaine, whose 
course both as a member of Congress and as Secretary 
of State had evoked hostile criticism, led to an im- 
mediate revolt of Independent Republicans, which in 
turn affected strongly the action of the Democrats. 
The Democratic platform vigorously arraigned, in 
general and in detail, the Republican policy, particu- 
larly in regard to the tariff, favored " honest civil ser- 
vice reform," and proclaimed its belief in "honest 
money, the gold and silver coinage of the Constitution, 
and a circulating medium convertible into such 
money without loss." The Democratic candidate for 
President was Grover Cleveland, Governor of New 
York, a man in whose ability, honesty, courage, and 
sincere desire for reform the Independents, or "Mug- 
wumps," enthusiastically believed. 

The campaign was one of personalities rather than 
of principles. Scurrilous charges against the private 
characters of the candidates were widely circulated. 
The indiscretion attributed to the Rev. Mr. Burchard, 
who, addressing the RepubHcan candidate in New 
York, on behalf of his brother clergymen, was said to 
have spoken of the Republicans as working against 
"rum, Romanism, and rebellion," cost Blaine 

587 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

many Irish votes. Mr. Cleveland was opposed, save 
at the last, by the powerful Democratic organization 
known as "Tammany Hall," but the Independents 
stood by him to the end. The vote was close, the 
result in New York being for several days in doubt, 
but the final returns from the country showed an 
electoral vote for Cleveland of 219 against 182 for 
Blaine, and a Democratic popular vote of 4,874,986 
in a total of over ten million. 

As the first Democratic President since Buchanan, 
and the trusted leader of the Independent Republi- 
cans who demanded reform, and to whom, as well as 
to the Democrats, he owed his election. President 
Cleveland was judged by standards more than or- 
dinarily exacting. If he did not fulfil all the ex- 
pectations of his supporters, he at least did not leave 
his own opinions in doubt, and the shortcomings of 
his first administration were due to the strength and 
virulence of the Republican organization and the 
lack of effective support within his own party, rather 
than to any abandonment of the principles to which 
he was attached. In the checkered character of its 
legislation the period of his administration recalled 
that of Hayes. There were political appointments 
and removals in the civil service, but there was no 
"clean sweep "; the spirit as well as the letter of the 
civil service law was in general observed, and the 
scope of the law widened. Against the stream of pri- 
vate pension bills, many of them of the most indefen- 
sible character, the President opposed his veto to an 
unprecedented extent; and though the total dis- 
bursements for pensions rose from $65,000,000 in 
1885 to $79,000,000 in 1888, one of the flagrant abuses 
of the system was temporarilv checked. 

588' 



THE NEWEST HISTORY 

Of constructive legislation there were many notable 
examples. The defective provision for the Presi- 
dential succession in case of the death or disability 
of the President — a contingency to which the long 
sickness of Garfield had pointedly called attention — 
was at last remedied by an act of January 19, 1886, 
which devolved the succession, after the Vice-presi- 
dent, upon the members of the cabinet in a prescribed 
order/ An act of February 3, 1887, made provision 
for the counting of the electoral vote for President 
and Vice-president, and rendered improbable the re- 
currence of any such dispute as convulsed the country 
in 1876-77. The great Interstate Commerce act 
of February 4, 1887, made elaborate provision for 
the federal regulation of interstate and foreign com- 
merce, forbade discrimination in rates for the trans- 
portation of persons or merchandise, and created an 
Interstate Commerce Commission to administer the 
act. Subsequent amendments have increased the 
stringency, if not the effectiveness, of the act. Pro- 
vision was made for the allotment of land in severalty 
to the Indians, and for extending the privilege of 
citizenship to Indians who should give up their tribal 
relations and accept allotments under the act. The 
Tenure of Office act was repealed and the trade dol- 
lar retired. A new anti-polygamy act dissolved the 
Mormon Church in Utah, and made drastic changes 
in the laws and administration of the Territory, with 
the result of effectually repressing for a number of 
years the political power of Mormonism and the im- 
moral practices which that rehgion sanctioned. The 

' The heads of the departments of Agriculture and of Labor 
and Commerce, who have become cabinet officers since the pas- 
sage of the act, are not included in the line of succession. 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

exclusion of Chinese laborers from the United States, 
which, by an act of 1882, had been limited to ten 
years, was made permanent. An act passed just be- 
fore the close of Arthur's administration had pro- 
hibited the importation of contract laborers. The 
demand for both of these latter acts came largely from 
the labor unions of the country. 

These were substantial gains. On the other hand, 
the treatment of the tariff issue was a disappoint- 
ment. The Democratic platforms have never been 
quite clear in regard to the tariff, and the action of 
the party has reflected the indistinctness of the plat- 
forms. The first and second annual messages of 
President Cleveland urged upon Congress the need 
of tariff reform and reduction of the surplus revenue ; 
but the Republican Senate and Democratic House 
could not agree, and the recommendations were un- 
heeded. Accordingly, in his message of December, 
1887, the President spoke with great force of the 
tariff alone, characterizing the existing law as "the 
vicious, inequitable, and illogical source of unneces- 
sary taxation," and declared that it was " a condition 
which confronts us, not a theory." The message tem- 
porarily solidified the Democratic majority in the 
House and spurred it to action. The Mills bill, re- 
moving the duty on wool and otherwise reducing the 
tariff, was passed by the House, but the Senate pre- 
ferred a bill of its own, which, among other things, 
cut off half of the existing duty on sugar ; but, as the 
two bills were framed on different principles, agree- 
.ment was hopeless, and nothing was done. 

President Cleveland was the logical candidate of 
his party in 1888 for a second term, and many Inde- 
pendents, though openly regretting that he had not 

59Q 



THE NEWEST HISTORY 

further advanced the cause of civil service reform, 
still adhered to him. The Republicans would doubt- 
less have renominated Blaine had not the latter given 
notice, in a letter to the chairman of the Republican 
National Committee, that for personal reasons his 
name would not be presented to the convention. In 
his place the convention nominated Benjamin Har- 
rison, of Indiana, grandson of President William 
Henry Harrison. Save for their attitude on the tar- 
iff — the great issue of the campaign — the party plat- 
forms were not noteworthy. The Democratic con- 
vention endorsed the Mills bill, though declining to 
make the resolution of endorsement a part of the 
platform ; and the two parties thus stood committed, 
the one rather indefinitely to tariff reform, the other 
definitely to the maintenance of the existing system. 
The public discussion of the question was unprece- 
dentedly eager, and all sorts of graphic devices were 
employed to win votes, especially from the laboring 
men. The British Minister at Washington, Lord 
Sackville, was so indiscreet as to write a letter to an 
unknown correspondent who assumed the name of 
Murchison, in which he implied that the success of 
Mr. Cleveland would be more acceptable to England 
than the election of General Harrison. The corre- 
spondence was published October 24, and President 
Cleveland shortly handed the unfortunate diplomat 
his passports ; but the state of public feeling was such 
that the incident undoubtedly alienated some support 
from the Democratic candidate. Mr. Cleveland's 
popular vote showed a plurality of about one hundred 
thousand, but he received only 168 electoral votes 
against 233 for Harrison. 

The Democrats were pledged to tariff reform, but 

591 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

they could not redeem the pledge. The Senate bill 
of 1888 was replaced by still another at the next ses- 
sion, but the House refused to accept it as a sub- 
stitute for the Mills bill, and in the ensuing wrangle 
among the Democrats the whole project met its 
death. More encouraging was the further extension 
of the merit system, and particularly its application 
to the railway mail service. A Department of Agri- 
culture was organized. The States of North and 
South Dakota, Montana, and Washington were ad- 
mitted to the Union, with the ill-concealed object of 
thereby increasing Republican strength. Then, ad- 
mired more than any of our Presidents for the ene- 
mies he had made. President Cleveland retired for 
four years to private life. 

With a President of their own party, and with work- 
ing majorities in both Senate and House, the victori- 
ous Republicans proceeded to carry into effect the 
declaration of their platform in the matter of pro- 
tection. The McKinley tariff act of 1890 — so called 
from William McKinley, of Ohio, chairman of the 
House Committee of Ways and Means — raised to un- 
precedented figures the duties on such foreign articles 
as competed with American manufactures, placed on 
the free list such foreign articles, except luxuries, as 
were not produced in this country, and empowered the 
President to put into effect duties on certain other- 
wise free goods where the countries from which the 
goods came imposed upon American goods "un- 
equal and unreasonable" duties. In the systematic 
exclusion of foreign products from the American 
market for the purpose of encouraging the consump- 
tion of American goods, the act was a great advance 
on all of its predecessors, and forms in many respects 

592 



THE NEWEST HISTORY 

the high-water mark of the protective policy. It was 
observed that in the debates the supporters of the 
bill insisted upon the maintenance of protection as a 
permanent policy, and that the demand for the pro- 
tection of "infant industries" was no longer he rd. 

Little was heard of economy in Congress, but lav- 
ish appropriations were the rule. There had een a 
surplus revenue since 1886, and such proposed reme- 
dies as the retirement of the greenbacks had been 
strongly opposed. The pension - list, already formi- 
dable, was further swelled by the passage of " disabili- 
ties" and "dependent parents" acts. In the four 
years from 1889 to 1893, the number of pensioners 
increased from 489,725 to 966,012, and the pension 
disbursements from $89,131,968 to $158,155,342. A 
new era of naval construction was begun with an 
initial appropriation of $25,000,000. There were in- 
creased outlays for the improvement of rivers and 
harbors and the erection of public buildings. The 
subject of silver was rendered dangerous by the re- 
peal of the " Bland - Allison act" of 1878, and the 
passage in its place of the "Sherman act" of 1890, 
requiring the purchase by the United States each 
month of four and a half million ounces of silver at 
the current market-price, and the issue thereupon of 
legal -tender treasury notes redeemable on demand 
in either gold or silver. The act was a concession to 
the silver sentiment in Congress, and, though a sub- 
stitute for free coinage, showed that the Republicans 
still "straddled" the money question. Practically, 
of course, the maintenance of the national credit 
would depend upon the ability of the government to 
redeem these silver notes in gold. An international 
monetary conference at Brussels, in which the United 

593 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

States participated, discussed the demand for the 
free coinage of silver, but without reaching an agree- 
ment. 

In almost every department Harrison's adminis- 
tration was prol fie of important legislation. A new 
system of circuit courts of appeals was established to 
relieve the Supreme Court, whose business had long 
been far in arrears. The establishment of interna- 
tional copyright did tardy justice to foreign authors. 
Criminal, insane, and "assisted" immigrants were 
excluded from the country. An anti-trust act made 
illegal every contract, combination, or conspiracy in 
restraint of trade or commerce among the several 
States or with foreign nations. A fatal blow was 
dealt to the Louisiana Lottery and other similar enter- 
prises by the exclusion of lottery matter from the 
mails. Civil service reform in the federal service 
prospered, and the purity of elections was aided by 
the spread among the States of the Australian or 
secret ballot. 

Yet the Republicans, with all their vigorous activ- 
ity, had not the confidence of the country. Their 
policy had been effective and, in many directions, 
beneficent, but it had been costly, and at the core of 
it more regardful of "special interests," particularly 
the protected industries, than of the people. The 
autocratic methods of the Speaker of the House, 
Thomas B. Reed, of Maine, had virtually put an end 
to free speech in that body, and threatened the rights 
of the minority with extinction. From the indus- 
trial centres rose a swelling volume of recrimination 
and complaint, on the one hand of the oppressive 
exactions of organized capital, on the other of the 
tyranny of organized labor. The elections of 1 890 -the 

504 




THE UNIT! 




■ TES, 1902 



THE NEWEST HISTORY 

very year of the McKinley tariff — were an overwhelm- 
ing defeat for the Republicans, a Republican major- 
ity of I o in the House of Representatives becoming 
a Democratic majority of 138. There were abun- 
dant signs of a hard contest in 1892. A new political 
party, destined to have far-reaching influence, had 
lately come into the field. In 1890 an organization 
known as the Farmers' Alliance had been formed in 
Kansas, and by the aid of the Knights of Labor had 
carried the State. The principal demands of the or- 
ganization were the free coinage of silver and sys- 
tems of national loans on certain farm products and 
farm lands. Out of this movement was formed, in 
1 89 1, the People's, or Populist, party, whose divisive 
influence upon the two great parties was to form one 
of the most striking political phenomena of the next 
decade. The spread of Populism was furthered by 
the poHtical activity of the granges, which were es- 
pecially strong in Republican States, and whose ex- 
treme protectionist views are reflected in the de- 
mands of the Populist programme. 

The selection of the Republican and Democratic 
candidates for President in 1892— Harrison and 
Cleveland — was foreordained. Interest centred in 
the action of the Populists and the attitude of the 
parties towards silver. The Republicans, afraid pub- 
licly to proclaim the gold standard, declared for bi- 
metallism "with such restrictions and under such 
provisions" as would insure the parity of values of 
the two metals. The Democrats said substantially 
the same thing, adding a de tinciation of the Sher- 
man act as "a cowardly makeshift." The Populists 
demanded the "free and unlimited coinage of silver 
and gold at the present legal ratio of sixteen to one." 

595 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

The candidate of the People's party was General 
James B. Weaver, of Iowa, the same who had been 
the Greenback candidate in 1880. The Republicans 
suffered from the lack of enthusiasm for Harrison 
and the severe defeat of 1890 in the States, and the 
Democrats from a party split in New York, while the 
extraordinary hold of Populism in the West and 
South led to fusions which baffled all political calcu- 
lations save as they indicated Democratic rather than 
Republican success. The result of the election was 
a pronounced Democratic victory. While Mr. Cleve- 
land did not receive a majority of the total vote, his 
vote exceeded by 380,000 that of Harrison; and he 
received 277 of the 444 electoral votes. The South 
was solidly Democratic; most of the doubtful States 
had been won from the Republicans, and California, 
Wisconsin, and Illinois were in the Democratic col- 
umn. On the other hand, the Populist candidate had 
polled over a million votes and won twenty -two elec- 
toral votes. 

The Congress which expired March 3, 1893, con- 
tinued the policy of extravagant appropriations not- 
withstanding the election, and left the incoming 
Democratic administration to deal with the financial 
situation, now rapidly becoming acute. The com- 
pulsory purchase of silver bullion under the Sherman 
act, and the issue thereon of notes redeemable in 
coin, together with the maintenance in circulation of 
nearly $350,000,000 in greenbacks, imposed a burden 
upon the Treasury which it could not long bear ; for 
the Treasury properly interpreted "coin" to mean 
gold. The decline in the market price of silver 
brought the intrinsic value of a dollar as low as sixty- 
seven cents, while the " gold reserve" in the Treasury, 

596 



THE NEWEST HISTORY 

nominally $100,000,000, was with difficulty kept 
above that point, and shortly fell below it. In June 
the mints in India were closed to free coinage, and the 
announcement added to the uncertainty already gen- 
eral in this country. Foreign holders of American 
securities, distrusting the ability of the United States 
to maintain the gold standard, made heavy sales in 
the American market. The new administration was 
hardly installed, accordingly, before a disastrous panic 
broke upon the country, with all the familiar accom- 
paniments of bank and commercial failures, the clos- 
ing of factories and mills, curtailment of production, 
railroad receiverships, and wide-spread suffering and 
loss. So large was the number of the unemployed 
that many cities and towns took up on a large scale 
the work of relief. President Cleveland called a 
special session of Congress for August 7th, but so pow- 
erful was the agitation for free coinage of silver that it 
was not until November i st that the Sherman act was 
repealed. As a step in the direction of currency re- 
form, the repeal was of great importance, but the 
economic question of the reform of the monetary 
system and the political issue of free coinage had yet 
to be dealt with. 

The Democratic pledge of tariff reform was only in 
part fulfilled by the passage, in August, 1894, of the 
"Gorman-Wilson" tariff act, which reduced many 
duties, put wool on the free list, and established an 
income-tax ; for the bill as passed by the House was 
so altered in the Senate as to rob it of most of its re- 
form character. President Cleveland expressed his 
opinion of it by allowing the bill to become law with- 
out his approval. A decision of the Supreme Court 
presently adjudged the income-tax unconstitutional. 

597 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

The revenue fell off, endangering both the gold re- 
serve and the ordinary resources of the government, 
and between January, 1894, and January, 1896, about 
$260,000,000 of bonds were sold by the Treasury. The 
determination of President Cleveland to maintain 
both the gold reserve and the national credit was high- 
ly applauded, but there was strong criticism of both 
the policy and the manner of selling bonds without 
direct authority of Congress. 

The strained financial condition bred industrial 
disturbances, too, of a serious sort. " Coxey's army" 
of the idle and ne'er-do-well, marching from Ohio to 
lay its grievances before the government at Wash- 
ington, was only the spectacular sign of wide-spread 
distress and discontent in the labor world, and of the 
instinctive feeling that the national administration 
was in some way responsible. A great strike of coal- 
miners, in the spring of 1894, extending into early 
summer, was hardly adjusted before a boycott of the 
Pullman cars, beginning with a strike of employes 
against a reduction of wages, and furthered by the 
co-operation of the American Railway Union, de- 
moralized railroad traffic, endangered life and prop- 
erty, and bred riot and anarchy at Chicago and other 
places. The Governor of Illinois having refused to 
take adequate steps to protect railroad property and 
quell the disturbances, President Cleveland pro- 
claimed martial law, and used regular troops to re- 
store order. No act of the President's public life was 
a more conspicuous illustration of his courage, but its 
constitutional propriety was unquestionable, and the 
better public opinion sustained it. Brooklyn, New 
York, suffered a severe strike of its street-railway 
employes, necessitating the use of militia. 

598 



THE NEWEST HISTORY 

It was in foreign affairs, however, that President 
Cleveland's second administration was most prolific 
of vivid interest. For several years there had been 
a perceptible growth of public feeling in favor of a 
"strong foreign policy"— a feeling always easily 
roused in a powerful democracy which is also young. 
An early manifestation of this feeling was the in- 
creased appropriations under Harrison for naval con- 
struction; and the policy thus inaugurated was con- 
tinued under President Cleveland. In 1895 a proj- 
ect for a ship-canal across Nicaragua, with the United 
States as the holder of more than two-thirds of the 
stock and the guarantor of the bonds of the company, 
came before Congress, where it was to continue to be 
for some years aggressively urged. The bill was pass- 
ed by the Senate, but left without action by the House. 
A more violent issue was preparing. The boundary 
between Venezuela and British Guiana had been lone 
in dispute. Great Britain, weary of the controversy, 
and a bit contemptuous of its opponent, at last pro- 
posed summarily to end the matter by enforcing its 
claim. Thereupon ensued a long diplomatic cor- 
respondence between the United States and Great 
Britain, in which the interest of this country in the 
controversy on account of the Monroe doctrine was 
vigorously set forth. As Great Britain showed no 
sign of yielding. President Cleveland startled the 
country by sending to Congress, December 17, 1895, 
a special message recommending the appointment of 
a commission to determine " the true divisional line" 
between the Republic of Venezuela and British 
Guiana, and declaring that, in his opinion, it would 
be the duty of the United States, after the report was 
made and accepted, "to resist, by every means in its 

599 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

power, as a wilful aggression upon its rights and in- 
terests, the appropriation by Great Britain of any 
lands or the exercise of governmental jurisdiction 
over any territory which, after investigation, we have 
determined of right belongs to Venezuela." So di- 
rect a threat of war had not been intimated by any 
President, and the "jingo" spirit ran high; stocks 
fell, the gold reserve declined, and in January there 
was a new bond issue. Congress promptly made 
provision for the commission, and in February, 1897, 
the commission made its report. Shortly before the 
presentation of the report, however. Great Britain 
and Venezuela agreed by treaty to refer the boun- 
dary controversy to arbitration. The award of the 
tribunal of arbitration, rendered October 3, 1899, 
sustained in general the British contention. 

In striking contrast with this cavalier treatment 
of the Venezuelan matter was the course of the ad- 
ministration in negotiating with Great Britain a gen- 
eral treaty of arbitration, *' under which all questions 
arising between the two governments were to be 
submitted to international tribunals." The treaty 
aroused earnest discussion, not only as to its details, 
but also as to the principle involved. Eventually the 
Senate rejected it, and an opportunity to lessen, by 
international agreement, the likelihood of war be- 
tween two nations that ought always to be at peace 
was lost. 

Brilliant, however, as was the second administra- 
tion of President Cleveland in some respects, it was 
in other respects discredited. Between the President 
and his party there was a steadily widening breach. 
On the question of silver there was entire absence of 
accord. Notwithstanding the repeal of the Sherman 

600 




^. 



THE NEWEST HISTORY 

act, a majority of each House of Congress favored free 
coinage. A bill to coin the "seigniorage" — that is, 
the difference, about $70,000,000, between the coin 
value and bullion value of the silver purchased under 
the Sherman act — was passed in 1894, but was vetoed 
by the President. The fall elections of 1894 once 
more gave the Republicans control of the House of 
Representatives by a large majority. Yet the party 
situation, so far as it stood related to the coming 
Presidential contest, was far from clear. Mr. Cleve- 
land was not likely to be for a fourth time a candi- 
date, yet the Democrats had no man of approximate- 
ly equal caliber to offer in his place. In the West the 
Populist party, now united for free silver, had at- 
tained great strength, and in several States outnum- 
bered both Democrats and Republicans. Within the 
Republican party there was a bitter struggle for 
leadership between William McKinley, a Representa- 
tive from Ohio, and official sponsor for the tariff act 
that bore his name, and Thomas B. Reed, of Maine, 
sometime Speaker of the House of Representatives. 
Reed's power as a public man had been chiefly shown 
in his absolute control of parliamentary procedure in 
the House and his caustic comments on fellow-mem- 
bers and measures; whether or not he was also a 
statesman had not yet appeared. Even the Prohibi- 
tion party, still maintaining its national organization 
in spite of the waning strength of its special cause, 
divided on the silver issue. 

The McKinley forces, under the astute leadership 
of Senator Marcus A. Hanna, of Ohio, captured the 
national Republican organization, and at the national 
convention at St. Louis, in June, 1896, nominated 
their candidate on the first ballot. Silver was the only 
^o 601 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

issue, and on this the platform declared opposition 
to free coinage " except by international agreement 
with the leading commercial nations of the world," 
which the party pledged itself to promote. The re- 
jection by the convention of a free-coinage substitute 
offered by Senator Teller, of Colorado, was followed 
by the retirement of thirty-four members from the hall. 
The Democratic convention surrendered bodily to the 
silver wing of the party, adopted a platform which 
demanded the free and unlimited coinage of silver at 
the existing ratio "without waiting for the aid or 
consent of any other nation," and nominated for 
President William J. Bryan, of Nebraska, whose 
magnetic plea before the convention for silver created 
a tremendous sensation. The Populists rejected a 
proposed alliance with the Democrats, though they 
nominated Mr. Bryan, as did also the National Silver 
party. 

In the earnestness of its discussion and the strenu- 
ousness of its effort, the campaign of 1896 was un- 
paralleled. To many the sole question presented was 
that of national honor ; and while the Republican plat- 
form apparently courted silver with a saving clause, 
there was apparently no hope of sound money from 
any other source. The country was flooded with 
financial literature. Thousands of gold Democrats 
"bolted" both Mr. Bryan and his platform, and an- 
nounced their intention to support the Republican 
candidate; and the independent vote was largely 
turned in the same direction. The great battle-ground 
was the central West, where the strong silver senti- 
ment and the concentration of the votes of several 
parties on the same candidate created a formidable 
opposition to the Republicans. Mr. Bryan made 

602 



THE NEWEST HISTORY 

tiutnerous speeches, while Mr. McKinley received' a 
stream of delegations from all parts of the country at 
his home at Canton, Ohio. The attitude of the labor 
vote was ground for anxiety, and there were rumors 
of intimidation practised by large employers of labor 
to induce votes for the Republican candidate. The 
election was a triumph for the " sound money" cause. 
Not only did McKinley receive a clean majority of 
the popular vote, but he also received 271 electoral 
votes against 176 for Bryan. Even the South was 
divided, the votes of Maryland and West Virginia, 
with twelve of the thirteen votes of Kentucky, being 
given to the Republican candidate. On the other 
hand, Mr. Bryan had won the Republican States of 
Kansas and Nebraska, all but three of the southern 
States, and the mining and Pacific coast States, ex- 
cept California and Oregon. The lines of battle in 
1900 were clearly to be seen as the smoke cleared from 
the field in 1896. 

The first administration of President McKinley will 
always be associated with the policy of "expansion," 
the adoption of which by the United States marks 
the beginning of a new era in American history. Al- 
most from the beginning of the government under the 
Constitution there had been, as we have seen, enlarge- 
ment of the national boundaries and incorporation of 
hitherto alien soil; but not until 1898 did the United 
States venture to extend its jurisdiction over re- 
mote islands, or undertake the management of col- 
onies on the other side of the globe. The anomalous 
situation in Cuba was the provocation. Of the few 
possessions remaining to Spain in the New World, 
Cuba was the most important. Spain, however, true 
to its historic policy, did little for the development of 

603 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

the island, gave to its people gross misgovemment, 
and administered it with a view to little else than the 
revenue to be extracted from it. The result was a 
succession of revolts against the Spanish authority, 
maintained by guerilla warfare, and attended with 
destruction of life and property and grave disturb- 
ance of business interests. The latest outbreak had 
occurred in February, 1895, and the Cuban resistance 
was continued in spite of great efforts made by Spain 
to overcome it. The United States could not remain 
an indifferent spectator of events in a country so near 
its own shores, and with which it had intimate and 
important commercial dealings, while the natural feel- 
ing of sympathy for a people struggling for indepen- 
dence was intensified by the publication of pitiful 
stories of the sufferings of the Cubans under the in- 
creasing rigors of Spanish coercion, and of the devas- 
tation of the country by the operations of war. 

The demand for the recognition of Cuban belliger- 
ency, increasingly urged in Congress and in the coun- 
try, was for some time firmly resisted by President 
McKinley, as it had been by President Cleveland, 
partly because of uncertainty regarding the actual 
condition of affairs in the island, and partly because 
of the breach with Spain which such recognition would 
inevitably cause. On the night of February 15, 1898, 
however, the United States battle-ship Maine, lying in 
the harbor of Havana ostensibly on a friendly visit, 
was blown up and 266 of its officers and crew were 
killed. Boards of inquiry appointed separately by 
the United States and by Spain reached different con- 
clusions as to the circumstances of the explosion ; but 
it was apparent that, without some extraordinary 
change in conditions, war was inevitable. The prog- 

604 




PHILIPPINE ISLANDS, 1903 



THE NEWEST HISTORY 

ress of events was rapid. An appropriation, March 
gth, of $50,000,000 for the national defence was fol- 
lowed, April I ith, by a request from President McKin- 
ley for authority to intervene and put a stop to hos- 
tilities in the island. Nine days later a resolution 
of Congress formally recognized the independence of 
Cuba and demanded the withdrawal of Spain. The 
declaration of war followed on the 25th, a blockade 
of the north coast of the island having been already 
proclaimed, and 125,000 volunteers were called for. 

The short story of the four months' war with Spain 
is one of brilliant success for the American arms, al- 
beit against an enemy incomparably weaker in every 
respect. The only real danger of a prolongation of 
the contest was in the possibility of European inter- 
vention, and the friendly attitude of Great Britain 
nipped intervention in the bud. In the early morn- 
ing of May ist. Commodore Dewey, in command of 
the Asiatic squadron, destroyed the Spanish fleet in 
Manila Bay, and subsequently held control of the 
harbor until the middle of August, when the arrival 
of troops from San Francisco enabled the Ameri- 
cans to take the city. A Spanish fleet under Admiral 
Cervera, attempting to escape. July 3d, from the har- 
bor of Santiago, where it had been blockaded, was 
destroyed by the American squadron under Rear- 
Admiral Sampson. Santiago surrendered on the 
1 7th. The island of Puerto Rico was occupied in July 
without serious hinderance. With its colonies lost 
and its navy destroyed, Spain sued for peace, and on 
August 12th hostilities were suspended. 

The treaty of Paris, December 10, 1898, which end- 
ed the war, provided for the relinquishment by Spain 
of all claim to Cuba and the temporary occupation 

605 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

of the island by the United States, the cession to the 
United States of Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philip- 
pines, and the payment to Spain of $20,000,000. The 
terms of the treaty immediately precipitated a vio- 
lent discussion. While the moral obligation of the 
United States to aid in the reconstruction of Cuba, 
and protect it for a time from outside interference, 
was generally admitted, and while the nearness of 
Puerto Rico gave it natural relations to the United 
States, the acquisition of the remote Philippines was 
by many vigorously opposed. The " anti-imperial- 
ists," as they were generally called, pointed out that 
the Constitution of the United States was ill-adapted 
to the exigencies of a colonial system, and that the 
possession of dependencies in a remote quarter of the 
globe would mean large expense and greatly increased 
danger of foreign war. The advocates of " expan- 
sion," on the other hand, claimed that the Philippines 
were the legitimate spoils of a righteous war, and that 
the nation ought not to shrink from the new respon- 
sibilities thus placed upon it. It was a struggle be- 
tween those who would have the United States de- 
velop in the future along the lines laid down in the 
past, with regard for tradition and the limitations of 
the Constitution, and those who would see the United 
States a world power like some of its fellows ; between 
those who still claimed to follow the God of Israel 
and those who would have gods like those of other 
nations. 

President McKinley, though a firm believer in " ex- 
pansion," moved with the caution of the practised 
politician. The reorganization of Cuba and Puerto 
Rico proceeded rapidly, and with beneficent results 
for both islands. With the Philippines, however, 

606 



THE NEWEST HISTORY 

the case was different. Such of the Filipinos as fol- 
lowed Aguinaldo were bitterly opposed to the Ameri- 
can occupation, and two years of war, marked oc- 
casionally by gross excesses on the part of the Ameri- 
can troops, were necessary before the process of 
"benevolent assimilation" was approximately es- 
tablished. The demand for independence, either 
immediate or in the near future, repeatedly urged by 
the Filipinos and by their friends in this country, has 
thus far failed to be listened to. The development 
of a colonial system of administration has been begun, 
although the affairs of the islands are still under the 
immediate supervision of the War Department. A 
Philippine commission, established in July, 1901, 
with full powers for the government of the islands, 
was followed in July, 1902, by the establishment of 
civil government under an act of Congress. Com- 
munication was facilitated by the laying of a Pacific 
cable, opened July 4, 1904, while a tariff act of March 
8, 1902, imposed duties on goods imported into this 
country from the Philippines. Puerto Rico and 
Hawaii — the latter group of islands having been an- 
nexed to the United States in 1897 — received in 1900 
special forms of government. The American occupa- 
tion of Cuba came to an end May 20, 1902, and the 
government of the island was left to its people. 

The notable domestic and diplomatic questions of 
President McKinley's first administration arose part- 
ly from the war with Spain and partly from the gen- 
eral policy of the Republicans. The outbreak of the 
war found the army lamentably deficient, and later 
investigation showed some scandalous conditions in 
the management of the camps and the provisioning 
of the troops. The navy, on the other hand, won 

607 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

laurels for its work, though the bitter fight made by 
the friends of Rear-Admiral Schley against the award 
to Rear-Admiral Sampson of the credit for the de- 
struction of Cervera's fleet assumed for a time nation- 
al importance, and left a painful impression. The 
immediate expenses of the war were more than met 
by an increase of the internal revenue taxes and a 
popular loan of $400,000,000 — the latter being several 
times oversubscribed. The settlement of the cur- 
rency question was advanced by the passage of an 
act making the gold dollar the unit of value, while 
the discovery of gold in the Klondike region, in the 
summer of 1897, did much to break the force of the 
free - coinage argument. On the other hand, the 
Dingley tariff of July, 1897, though "thoroughly 
protective in its provisions," has not prevented the 
recurrence of a deficit in time of peace, or so far in- 
sured general prosperity as to prevent extensive re- 
ductions of wages in manufacturing and other employ- 
ments. The Nicaragua canal project continued to 
be urged as a great national duty, and in 1901 the 
Clayton-Bulwer treaty of 1850 was superseded by 
the Hay-Pauncefote treaty, under which the control 
of an interoceanic canal, when constructed, would be 
assumed by the United States. The long controversy 
over routes and plans was terminated by the treaty 
of November 18, 19I13, between the United States and 
the Republic of Panama, under which the United 
States guaranteed the independence of Panama — 
which had seceded from Columbia — and gained con- 
trol of the Panama route. The proposals of The 
Hague conference for the establishment of an inter- 
national court of arbitration were ratified by the 
Senate in February, 1900. 

6q« 



THE NEWEST HISTORY 

Expansion and silver were the predominant issues 
in the Presidential campaign of 1900. The Repub- 
lican and Democratic candidates were the same as 
in 1896. On the silver question the declarations of 
the two platforms were as divergent as ever; but 
while the Republican platform endorsed the McKinley 
administration, and promised the inhabitants of the 
possessions acquired from Spain " the largest measure 
of self-government consistent with their welfare and 
our duties," the Democratic platform declared against 
" imperialism," without condemning territorial expan- 
sion "when it takes in desirable territory which can 
be erected into States of the Union, and whose people 
are willing and fit to become American citizens." For 
Vice-president the Republicans nominated Theodore 
Roosevelt, a strenuous American, a vigorous cham- 
pion of civil service reform, and at the moment Gov- 
ernor of New York; the Democrats nominated Adlai 
E. Stevenson, of Illinois. Notwithstanding the sup- 
port of Bryan by the Populists and silver Repub- 
licans, the election was another great Republican 
victory. In a total vote of nearly 14,000,000, Presi- 
dent McKinley had a plurality over Bryan of about 
850,000, and a majority over all opponents of over 
456,000; while of the 447 electoral votes the Repub- 
lican candidates received 292. It was possible to in- 
terpret the election as an indorsement of expansion, 
but there was no doubt that it was a victory for 
"sound money." 

President McKinley 's caution and hesitancy, his 
failure, notwithstanding an unusual power of cogent 
and dignified speech, to declare himself with definite- 
ness, his unsatisfactory treatment of the civil service, 
and his obvious tenderness towa^rds great fina,ncial in- 

609 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 

terests, had evoked much criticism even within his 
own party, and led to the charge that he was not, in 
public affairs, his own master. Later opinion has 
been inclined to recognize in him one of the most 
astute politicians that ever occupied the Presidential 
chair. But he was not to serve long either his ene- 
mies or his friends. He was shot by an anarchist on 
September 6, 1901, and died eight days later; and 
Vice-president Roosevelt reigned in his stead. Of all 
the men of prominence in the Republican ranks, none 
would less probably have been made Vice-president 
had his succession to the Presidency been thought in 
any way probable ; for none was of more independent 
temper, none more impatient of tradition, none more 
out of sympathy with the policy of favoritism for 
special interests with which the Republican organi- 
zation was identified. The dignity and restraint with 
which Mr. Roosevelt took up the duties of an office 
thus sadly thrust upon him won hearty commenda- 
tion and everywhere inspired confidence. It was clear 
beyond need of demonstration that there had entered 
the field of national politics a forceful personality, 
whose course under the stress of party exigency none, 
indeed, could with confidence predict, but with which 
every enemy of good "government would have to 
reckon. 



INDEX 



Abbott, Dr. C. C, 24. 
Abenaki Indians, their treaty, 

179. 
Abercrombie, General James, 

182. 
Abolition movement, 434, 443, 

444, 448, 450. 
Abolition of slavery, 434. 
Abolitionists, 452, 453, 461, 

466, 474, 500. 
Acadia, 179, 181. 
Act of Navigation, the, 210. 
Adams, Abigail, quoted. 241, 

243; also, 257, 300. 309, 324, 

325, 330. 
Adams, Charles Francis, 3S2, 

569- 

Adams, John, his view of town- 
meetings, 230; his election as 
President, 319; his character, 
323: his wife, 324; his cabinet, 
326; his policy towards France, 
ibid.; his rupture with his 
party, 328; his correspond- 
ence with Mercy Warren, 335; 
his old age, 342; also, 230, 
242, 243. 

Adams, John Quincy, quoted. 
372, 382; vote for Missouri 
Compromise, 373; Presidency 
of , 385 : internal improvements 
recommended by, 397; the 
same accomplished, 398; en- 
tertainments of, 406; cir- 
cumstances of his election, 
407, 418; his policy, 409; his 
defeat, 410, 419; his want 
of popularity, 419; also, 411, 
414, 421, 452, 459, 460. 

61 



Adams, Mrs. John Quincy, 

377- 
"Adams and Liberty," song of, 

327- 
Adams. Samuel, 243, 280, 291, 

322. 
Adolphus. Gustavus, 157. 
"Adventurer," the word, 137. 
African negroes, 435, 440. 
Aguinaldo, 607. 
Alabama, admitted as a State, 

372; passed ordinance of 

secession, 510. 
Alaska purchased from Russia, 

563- 
Alexander, William E., 395, 415. 
Alexander VI., Pope, bulls of, 

73. 104- 
Algerine pirates, 285. 
Algonquins, the, 124. 
Aliaco, P. dc, 53. 
Alien and Sedition laws, 328. 

334- 
Allen, Ethan, 240. 
Alligators, early descriptions of, 

86. 
Allison, William B., 548. 
Ambrister, R. C, 372, 418. 
American Antislavery Society, 

44^.- 
American Colonization Society. 

443- 

American flora, 209; finance. 
306; physique, 311; seamen 
impressed, 347, 348; litera- 
ture, 398. 

Americans, the first, i. 

Ames, Fisher, 288, 304. 378. 

Amidas, Philip, 95. 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 



Anderson, Major, 514. 
Andr6, Major John, 279. 
Andros, Governor Edmund, 176, 

177, 207, 213, 214, 215. 
Andros, Lady, 213. 
Anghiera, P. M. d' (Peter 

Martyr), 54, 56, 66, 68, 80, 

82, 112. 
Anna, Santa, President of 

Mexico, 459, 471. 
Anne, Queen, 178. 
Antietam, 522. 
Anti-imperialists, 606. 
Antiquitates AmericancB, 26, 41. 
Appomattox Court-House, Lee's 

surrender at, 532. 
Arbuthnot, A., 371, 418. 
Archer, W. S., 405. 
Architecture in colonies, 223. 
Aristophanes, 186. 
Aristotle's narrow sea, 53. 
Arkansas, seceded from Union, 

516; reconstructed, 543. 
Armistead, Colonel George, 358. 
Army, Revolutionary, organiza- 
tion of, 246; condition of, 248; 

Washington's views of, 249; 

statistics of, 273, 280; drilled 

by Steuben, 274; disbanded, 

280. 
Arnold, Benedict, 42, 240, 251, 

279. 
Arnold, Matthew, 187. 
Arthur, Chester A., succeeds 

to the Presidency, 585. 
Ashburton treaty, 463. 
Asher, Dr., 82. 
Ashley, James A., 557. 
Asiatics in America, 21. 
Astor, John Jacob, 334. 
Atlanta, General Sherman at, 

529- 
Atlantic cable laid, 580. 
Australian, or secret, ballot, 

594- 
Avalon, colony of, 156. 
Aztecs, 2, 4, 16, 18, 22, 60. 

Baccalaos, the, 81, 112. 
Bache, Mrs. B. F., 406. 
Bacon, Lord, 83. 
Bacon, Nathaniel, Jr., 171. 



Bacourt, M., 404. 

Bagot, Sir Charles, 377. 

Bahia, alleged column at, 42. 

Balboa. {See Nuiiez, Vasco.) 

Baltimore, Cecil, Lord, 156, 162, 
190. 

Baltimore, George, Lord, 156. 

Baltimore founded, 156; "hor- 
rors of," 353. 

Bancroft, George, 26, 43, 105. 
218, 260. 

Bancroft, H. H., 4. 

BandeUer, A. F., 5, 8, 13. 

Bank, United States, 334, 431, 
432, 443, 456, 462. 

Barclay, Robert, 198. 

Barker, Jacob, 358. 

Barlow, Arthur, 95, 378. 

Barton, Mrs. {See Livingston, 
Cora.) 

Basque fishermen, 112. 

Beamish, C. C, 41. 

Beaujour, Chevalier de. 311. 

Beauregard, General, 514, 515. 

Becher, Captain, 59. 

Belknap, Dr. Jeremy, quoted. 
182. 

Bell, John, candidate for Presi- 
dent, 508. 

Bering Strait, width of, 22. 

Berkeley, Governor WiUiam, 
171, 194. 

Bernaldez, Andres, 115. 

Bimini. island of, 69. 

Bingham, Mrs., 309. 

Bingham, William, 406. 

Birkbeck. Captain Morris, 393. 

Bimey, James G., candidate 
for Presidency, 453, 466. 

"Black Sally," 331. 

Blaine, James G., in Congress, 
548; as Speaker of the House. 
574; candidate for Presidency, 
587; declined a second nomi- 
nation, 591. 

Blair, Jr., General Francis P., 
candidate for Vice-president, 
562. 

"Bland act," 582. 

Bland, Richard P., 582. 

Blaxton, William, 195. 

Block, Adrian, 144. 



Ol? 



INDEX 



Bombazen, an Indian chief, 166. 

Bonaparte, Napoleon, his de- 
crees, 339, 347; Federahst ser- 
mon against, 351; also, 360, 

563- 

Boone, Daniel, 402. 

Boston, settlement of, 153; 
evacuation of, 250. 

Bourbourg, Brasseur de, 17. 

Bout well, George S., 5 48. 

Bowdoin, Governor James, 300. 

Bowling-alley built by a clergy- 
man, 188. 

Braddock, General Edward, 181. 

Bradford, Governor William, 
145. 148, 151. 187- 

Bradley, Judge Joseph P., 576. 

Bradley, Thomas, 80. 

Bradstreet, Governor Simon, 
183, 214. 

Bragg, General Braxton, 520, 
521. 528. 

Brazil, 74. 

Brebeuf, Pere, 117. 

Breck, Sg^nuel, quoted, 405, 
406, 414. 

Breckinridge, John C, candi- 
date for Vice-president, 501; 
his election, 502; candidate 
for President, 508. 

Breedon, Captain Thomas, 210. 

Brehan, Madame de, 299, 300. 

Breton fishermen, the, 83, 113. 

Brewster, Elder William, 151, 
187. 

Brissot de Warville, J. P., 300. 

Bristow, Benjamin H., 574. 

British, plans of, in Revolu- 
tionary War, 273. 

British yoke, the, 209. 

Bromfield, Henry, 332. 

Brooks, C. W., 21. 

Brooks, Rev. C. T., 42. 

Brown, John, led attack on 
Harper's Ferry, 505; hanged, 
506. 

Browne, Sir Thomas, 219. 

Bryan, William J., nominated 
for President, 602, 609. 

Bryant, W. C, 182, 380. 

Buccaneers, 88, 96, 100. 

Buchanan, James, candidate 

6 



for Presidency, 501; his elec- 
tion, 502; helpless in hands of 
slavery advocates, 507. 

Bull Run, 515, 522. 

Bumstead, Jeremiah, 166, 167. 

Bunker Hill, battle of, 245, 246. 

Burchard, Rev. Mr., 587. 

Burgoyne, General John, 243, 
273. 274. 

Burke, Edmund, 276, 291, 322. 

Burns, Anthony, trial of, 487. 

Burnside, General, 522. 

Burr, Aaron, 329, 339. 

Burras, Anne, 140. 

Butler, General Benjamin F., 

^ 523. 558. 

Butler, Senator, 499. 

Buttrick, Major, 236. 

Cabeca de Vaca. {See Nunez, 
Alvar.) 

Cabinet of Washington, 300. 

Cabot, George, 352. 

Cabot, J. E., 46. 

Cabot, John, 75, 78, 80, 81. 

Cabot, Sebastian, 7^, 78, So, 8t, 
82. 

Cabot, Zuan (John), 79. 

Cabots, the, 76, 100, 112. 

Cacafuego, the, captured by 
Drake, 91. 

Calhoun, John C, his opinions, 
377, 382; Vice-president, 404, 
420, 427, 428; quoted, 429; 
great speech of, 479; death 
of, 480. 

Calhoun, Miss, 404. 

Calhoun, Mrs., 427. 

California, visited by Drake, 93; 
ceded to the United States, 
473; discovery of gold in, 477; 
admitted into the Union, 479. 

Calvert, George (Lord Balti- 
more), 156. 

Calvert, Governor Leonard, 156. 

Cambridge, Mass., settled, 152; 
"Tory Row" in, 228. 

Canada, derivation of word, 
107; attacks on, 178; surren- 
der of, by France, 183, 231 ; in- 
fluence of this surrender, 2"i9; 
invasions of, 251, 372. 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 



Canals, introduction of, 401. 
Candidates, nomination of, 409. 
Canning, George, 322, 382. 
Carleton, Sir Guy, 279. 
Carlyle, Thomas, quoted, 144. 
Carolina, settlement of, 204; 

division of, 205; introduction 

of slavery in, 435. 
Carr, Lucien, 168. 
Carroll, Mr., 357. 
Carter, James, 80. 
Carthagena captured by Drake, 

97; 

Cartier, J., 105, 107, 108, 113, 

123. 
Cartwright, Colonel Thomas, 

210, 211. 
Carver, Jonathan, 151. 
Cass, Lewis, 474, 475. 
Castin, St., 175. 
Cathay, 107. 
Catholic and Huguenot clergy, 

113- 

Cavendish, Thomas, 99. 

Centennial Exhibition, 580. 

Cerro Gordo, 472. 

Cervera, Admiral, 605. 

Chambersburg burned, 528. 

Champigny, M., 176. 

Champlain, Samuel de, his 
journals, 121; his musketry, 
125; his campaign with the 
Iroquois, 126; also, 133, 134, 
143. 163, 173, 175, 202. 

Champlin, Miss, 278. 

Chapultepec, heights of, 472. 

Charlemagne, Emperor. 27. 

Charles I., 139. 

Charles II., 170, 204, 205, 209. 

Charlesfort, near Beaufort, S. 
C, no. 

Charleston, S. C, 252. 

Charlestown, Mass., settled, 153. 

Charlevoix, P. F. X., 175. 

Charlotte, Queen, 325. 

Charter of Virginia, 134; of 
Maryland, 155; of Connecti- 
cut, 212; of Massachusetts, 
214; colonial charters an- 
nulled, 214. 

Chase, Chief-justice, 558. 

Chastellux, Marquis de, 310, 311. 

6 



Chatham, Earl of, 221, 276. 
Chesapeake, the, 339. 
Chesterton, England, mill at, 

42. 
Chicago, 111., 369, 393, 395. 
Chichen-Itza, 20. 
Chickamauga Creek, 528. 
Choate, Rufus, 483. 
Choiseul, Due de, 231. 
Cholula, pyramid of, 13. 
Chopunish Indians, 11. 
Christiana, Del., foundation of, 

157- 

Christina, Queen, 157. 

Christopher, St., 56. 

Church, Captain Benjamin, 165, 
170. 

Churubusco, battle of, 472. 

Cicero, 188. 

Cincinnati, O., 369. 

Circleville, O., 15. 

Circumnavigation of globe by 
Drake, 94; by Cavendish, 99. 

Civil offices, tenure of service in, 
381; appointments to, 421; 
also, 307, 308, 334, 409. 

Civil Rights bill, 558. 

Civil service commission, 568, 
586. 

Civil service reform, 570, 571, 
583, 586, 587, 591. 

Civil war, outbreak of, 514; 
Fort Sumter, 514; Bull Run, 
515, 522; Wilson's Creek, 
517; Fort Henry and Fort 
Donelson , 519; occupation 
of Nashville, 520; Vicksburg, 
Murfreesborough, and Fair 
Oaks, 521; Antietam, Fred- 
ericksburg, and Hampton 
Roads, 522; Chancellorsville 
and Gettysburg, 526; Vicks- 
burg, 527 ; Chickamauga Creek 
and the battle of the Wilder- 
ness, 528; Sherman at Atlanta, 
529; Lee's surrender at Ap- 
pomattox Court-House, 532; 
cost of, 533, 534, 537, 538. 

Clark, General William, 334. 

Clavigero, Francisco, 10. 

Clay, Henry, Federalist, 371; 
candidate for Presidency, 407, 



14 



INDEX 



408, 4?o, 465; compromise 
tariff of, 429; quotation from, 
438; also, 346, 373, 378, 418, 
419, 461, 478, 479. 

Clayton - Biilwer treaty, 481;, 
608. 

Cleveland, Grover, nominated 
for President, 587, 590, 595; 
his election, 588, 596; his first 
administration, 588-590; fi- 
nancial conditions during his 
second term, 597, 598; and 
the Venezuela boundary dis- 
pute, 599, 600. 

Clinton, TOe Witt, 355, 401. 

Clinton, George, 338, 341. 

Clinton, Sir Henry, 242. 

Cobbett, William, 348. 

Coffin, Levi, 48S. 

Colden, Governor Cadwallader, 

Coleridge, S. T., 70. 

Colfax, Schuyler, candidate for 
Vice-president, 561; his elec- 
tion, 562. 

Colling\vood, Lord, 348. 

Colonies, French Protestant, 
109, no, III, 112; Lane's, 
Grenville's, White's, 130; Gos- 
nold's, 133; Popham's, 134, 
147; Virginia, 134, 138; Dutch 
143; Plymouth, 145; Massa- 
chusetts, 152; Connecticut, 
155, 158, 159; Calvert's, 156; 
Swedish, 157; Penn's, 205; 
union of, 214. 

Colorado organized as a terri- 
tory, 511. 

Columbus, Christopher, his voy- 
age as compared with that of 
the Northmen, 49; his train- 
ing, 50; his reasonings, 51; 
his voyage, 53; his delusions, 
54; landfall, 59; his treat- 
ment of natives, 60; his 
influence on the Cabots, 76; 
also, 62, 63, 68, 72, 75, 80, 84, 
105, 115. 

Columbus, Ferdinand, 53. 

Commerce, ruin of American, 
339. 354; Jefferson's opposi- 
tion to, 340, 354. 

61 



Commissioners, royal, in Bos- 
ton, 210. 

Comogre, 66. 

Conant, Roger, 152. 

Confederacy, 214, 510, 532, 535, 
536, 541- 

Confederation, experiments at, 
215; formation and failure of, 
283. 

Congress, Continental, records 
of, 253; discussions in, 261, 
262, 268; early resolutions of, 
267; a single house, 284; man- 
ners in, 346. 

Conkling, Roscoe, 548, 585. 

Connecticut, colonies of, 155; 
education in, 193; witchcraft 
in, 200 ; charter of , 2 1 2 ; Conti- 
nental troops in, 279. 

Constellation, the frigate, 327. 

Constitution, discussion and 
formation of, 291. 

Constitution and Guerriere, bat- 
^ tie of, 355. 

Continental Congress. {See 
Congress.) 

Contreras, battle of, 472. 

Cooper, J. Fenimore, 380, 402. 

Copper-mines, early Indian, 122. 

Comwallis, Earl of, 272, 279. 

Coronado, Francisco dc, 9. 

Cortez, Hernando de, 9, 10, 17, 
69, 70. 

Costume, changes of, 331. 

Cotton, increased demand for, 
440; trade destroyed, 525. 

Cotton-gin, invention of the, 

439- 
Coverley, Sir Roger de, an 

American, 332. 
" Coxey's army," 598. 
Crandall, Prudence, persecuted, 

449. 
Crawford, William H., 370, 378, 

382, 407, 408, 418, 422. 
Creasy, Sir Edward, 274. 
Creek Indians, 1 1. 
Croatoan, 131. 
Cromwell, Oliver, 208. 
Cromwell, Richard, 209. 
Cuba, situation in, 603; revolts 

in, 604; independence of, rec- 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 



ognized by United States, 

605. 
Cudraigny, an Indian god, 108. 
Cullenden, Rose, 200. 
"Cumberland Road" bill, 384, 
Curtis, Benjamin R., 558. 
Custis, Nelly, 314. 
Cutler, Dr. Manasseh, jgg. 
Cutts, Mrs., 358. 

Dakota organized as a Terri- 
tory, 511. 

Dane, Nathan, 293. 

Danes, the, ^^. 

Darby, William, 393, 394. 

Dare, Ananias, 131. 

Dare, Virginia, 132. 

Darien, 66. 

Darwin, Charles, 4, 19. 

D'Avezac, M., 75. 

Davis, Captain Isaac, 236. 

Davis, Isaac P., 354. 

Davis, Jefferson, chosen presi- 
dent of Confederate States, 
510; calls for volunteers, 516; 
suspends privilege of habeas 
corpus, 525; former seat oc- 
cupied by black man, 567. 

Davis, John, 329. 

Davis, Judge David, 576. 

Dawes, Henry L., 548. 

Dayton, William L., candidate 
for Vice-president, 501. 

Deane, Charles, 75, 211. 

De Brv's imaginary monsters, 

^ 55- 

Decatur, Commodore Stephen, 

341- 

Declaration of Independence, 
263,^264, 267. 

Deerfield, Mass., massacre at, 
178. 

Delaware, Lord, 142, 157. 

Delaware settled, 157, 15S; 
connection with Pennsyl- 
vania, 205, 218. 

Delft Haven, 146. 

Democratic party, first called 
Republican, 323; triumph of, 
329; material of, 335; long in 
power, 343; change in doc- 
trines of, 361. 

61 



Dennie, T. G., his Portfolio, 328; 

his attack on Jefferson, 330. 
Denonville, M., 176. 
Dewey, Commodore George, in 

command of Asiatic squad- 
ron, 605. 
Dexter, F. B., 195. 
Diaz, Bernal, 10, 104. 
Dickens, Charles, 298. 
Dickinson, John, quoted, 218; 

speech of, 259, 260; also, 

256, 258, 261, 265. 
Dighton Rock, the, 41. 
Diman, Professor, 195. 
Dodge, Senator, 491. 
Donelson, Mrs., 427. 
Doniphan, Colonel, 471. 
Dorchester, Mass., settled, 153. 
Dorchester Company, the, 152. 
Douglas, Stephen A., 492, 493, 

494, 505, 507. 508. 
" Downing, Jack," 414. 
Downing, Sir George, 185. 
Draft riots, 530. 
Drake, Sir Francis, 88, 89, 

91, 92, 94, 95, 96, 98, 99, lOO, 

130. 
Ducket, Lionel, 84. 
Duelling at Washington, 346. 
Duny, Anne, 200. 
Dustin, Hannah, 165. 
Dutch in America, the, 144, 158, 

203, 204. 
Dutch West India Company, 144. 
Dwight, Rev. Timothy, 378. 

Earle, Thomas, candidate for 
Vice-president, 453. 

"Eastward, Ho!" quoted, 137. 

Eaton, Mrs., 426. 

Edmunds, George F., 548. 

Education in the colonies, 193, 
194. 

Edwards, Dr. Enoch, 268. 

El Dorado, loi. 

" Elephant Mound," the, 23. 

" Elephant pipe," the, 23. 

Eliot, Rev. John, 119, 186, 187, 
242. 

Elizabeth, Queen, Raleigh's trib- 
ute to, 103; also, 84, 87, 88, 
93/103- 

6 



INDEX 



Ellery, William, quoted, 26cS; 

also, 272, 293. 
Ellis, Dr. George E., quoted, 

119, 162, 166. 
Embargo, the, 340; Bryant's 

poem against, ibid. 
Emerson, Rev. William, quoted, 

246, 247. 
Emerson, R. W., quoted. 367. 
Endicott, John, 152, 153, 154, 

187, 210. 
England. {See Great Britain.) 
English nation, an, predicted by 

Raleigh, 129. 
Englishmen in America, second 

generation of, 184. 
Ericsson, John, 523. 
Erie Canai, 444. 
Erik the Red, 35, 40. 
Eskimo, 21. 

Eustis, Dr. William, 237. 
Evarts, William M., 558. 
Everett, Dr. William, quoted, 

44- 
Everett, Edward, 379, 380, 381, 

508. 
Ewaiponima, an imaginary race, 

102. 
Excommunication of Fletcher 

by Drake, 97. 

Fair Oaks, 521. 
Farmers' Alliance, 595. 
Farragut, Admiral David G., 

520, 529. 
Fauchet, Baron, 318. 
Federalists, their decline, 338, 

346; their inconsistency, 349; 

their defence of the right of 

search, 350; partisanship of, 

351; their provocations, 353. 
Ferdinand, King of Spain, 53, 

59, 61, 76. 
Fernow, Berthold, 144. 
Fersen, Count, 321. 
Fessenden, William Pitt, 548. 
Fielding, Henry, 253. 
Fifteenth Amendment, 564, 566. 
Fillmore, Millard, candidate for 

President, 501. 
Finance, American, established 

by Hamilton, 306. 

40 6 



"First" and "Second" Vir- 
ginia colonies, 134. 

Flag, the American, 278. 

Fletcher, Rev. Francis, 90, 97. 

Flint, Timothy, 394, 400. 

Flora, American, transfonned. 
209. 

Florida, mounds of, 15; origin 
of name of, 69; purchase of, 
372; passed ordinance of seces- 
sion, 510. 

Floyd, John, 430. 

Foote, Commodore, 519. 

Ford's Theatre, Lincoln shot in, 

533- 

Forrest, Mrs., 140. 

Fort Caroline, Florida, no. 

Fort Fisher, fall of, 530. 

Fort Moultrie, defence of, 251. 

Foster, J. W., cited, 13. 

Fountain of Youth, search for 
the, 68. 

Fourteenth Amendment, the. 
55°. 551. 552. 560, 566. 

Fox, Captain, 59. 

Fox, Charles James, 276. 

France, policy of, towards Ind- 
ians, 116, 124; discoveries 
of, 175; activity of, 181; 
claims surrendered, 183; first 
treaty with, 275; army of, in 
America, 277 ; influence of, on 
America, 314, 320; X, Y, Z 
negotiations, 326. 

Francis I., 105. 

Franklin, Benjamin, quoted, 
232, 266, 291; letter to, 282; 
his political theory, 291; also, 
217. 253, 256, 259, ?63. 264, 
27s, 286, 292, 439. 

Franks, Rebecca, 309, 310. 

Freedman, Edward A., 518. 

"Freedmen," negro, 545, 547, 
548. 

Freedmen's Bureau bill, 545, 

548, 551- 

Freedom, religious, in Rhode Isl- 
and and Maryland, 191. 

Free-Soil Democrats, 491. 

Fremont, John C, in the Mexi- 
can War, 471; candidate for 
President, 501. 

17 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 



French ami Indian wars, 1 24, 
125. 

French Rc\olution. influence of, 
upon Americans, 314, 315; in- 
fluence of, on party lines, 320. 

Freneau, Philip, 315, 378. 

Freydis, a Norse woman, 39. 

Frobisher, Captain Martin, 95, 
96. 

Frontenac, Comte de. 116. 177. 

Frost, Mr., 224. 

Frothingham, Richard, quoted, 
234; also, 245, 257. 

Fugitive - Slave law, 4S2, 485, 
489, 490, 491, 500. 

Fugitive slaves, 487, 48 S, 523. 

Fulton, Robert, 400. 

Gadsden Purchase, the, 473. 

Gage, General Thomas, 244. 

Gaines, General, 460. 

Gallatin, Albert, 322, 354, 370, 
416. 

Garfield, James A., member of 
the House, 548; nominated 
for President, 583; his elec- 
tion, 584; shooting and death 

of,- 585- 

Gamier, Pere, 117 

Garrison, W. L., 433, 444. 44.S. 
447, 449, 450. 

Gates, General Horatio, 274. 

Genet, E. C. 316, 318. 

Geneva Tribunal, the, 568. 

George III., King, 276. 

Georgia, mounds of, 15; Con- 
tinental troops of, 2 So; passed 
ordinance of secession, 510. 

Germantown, Pa., battle of, 274. 

Gerry, Elbridge, 266, 2 87, 291, 
308, 355. 

Gettysburg, battle of, 526; 
Lincoln's address at, 527. 

Giddings, Joshua R., 452. 

Gilbert, Raleigh, 134. 

Gilbert, Sir Humphrey, 94. 

Gilman, D. C, cited, 370, 382. 

Gleig, Rev. G. R., 344. 

Globe of Schoner, 63, 64, 65. 

Gomara, F. L. de, 10, So. 

Goodrich, A., 61. 

Goodrich, James, speech of, 369. 

6 



Goodrich. S. G., cited, 380. 

Gorges, Sir F.. 134, 135. 

Gorsuch shot, 4S6. 

Gorton, Samviel, 191. 

Gosnold, Bartholomew, 132,133, 
138, 140, 146. 

Gougou, an Indian monster, 123. 
202. 

Gourgues, Dominique de, 112. 

Gouverneur, Mrs., 376. 

" Governor Shirley's War," 180. 

Graham, William A., candidate 
for Vice-president. 491. 

Grant, General Ulysses S., in- 
vaded Confederate territory, 
519; at Vicksburg, 521, 527: 
moved to Thomas's relief. 
528; Lee's surrender fo, 532: 
appointed Secretary of War, 
555; his nomination for the 
Presidency, 561; his election. 
562, 570; and the restoration 
of the Sovithern States, 563; 
conditions of the South dur- 
ing his first term, 564, 565; 
not a great statesman. 567; 
has "expansion" fever, 56S; 
his administration denounced, 
569; his second administra- 
tion, 571, 572; before the Re- 
{jublican convention for third 
term, 583. 

Grant, Mrs., of Laggan, 228. 

Gravier, M., 46. 

Gray, Dr. Asa. 22. 

Great Britain, explorations from, 
74; seamen of, 83; wars of. 
with Spain. 87; her claims of 
discovery. 94; early colonies 
of, 130; her wars with France, 
160; with Indians, 164; love 
of colonists for, 208; love of, 
changed into hatred, 209; ag- 
.gressions of, 210; official igno- 
rance in, 215; feeling in, tow- 
ards colonies, ibid.; outbreak 
of war with, 232 ; peace negoti- 
ations with, 279; Jay's treaty 
with. 317; new aggressions of. 
339; second war with. 343: 
treaty of Ghent with. 359- 
slavcrv abolished in, 44'*^. 



INDEX 



claims against, 568; and the 
Venezuela boundary dispute, 
599, 600; friendly attitude of, 
towards United States, 605. 

Greeley, Horace, 569; candidate 
for President, 570: death of, 
ibid. 

Greene, General Nathanacl, 271, 
279. 

Greene, George 'W. . 105. 

Greenland, 35, 43, 45, 48, 49. 

Grenville, Sir Richard, 130. 

Grimalfson, Bjarni, 29. 

Griswold, R. W., 310. 

Grundy, Lewis, 346, 347. 

Guadalupe Hidalgo, treaty of. 
472. 

Guam, 606. 

Guiana, loi. 

Gun-boats, Jefferson's, ^T,i), 354. 

Gutierrez, Pedro, 58. 

Hackit, Thomas, 109. 

Hague Conference, the. 608. 

Hakluyt. Richard, 84. 94. 105, 
130. 

Hale, John P., 367; candidate 
for President, 475, 491. 

Hale, Sir Matthew, quoted, 200. 

Hall, Bishop, quoted, 146, 200. 

Halleck, F. G., quoted, 374. 

Halleck, General, 522. 

Hallowell, R. P., 197. 

Hamilton, Alexander, financial 
achievements of, 306; quoted, 
318; his quarrel with Adams, 
329; death of, 338; also, 299, 
303, 304, 305, 312, 316, 320, 
326. 327. 329, 334, 338, 344. 

364- 

Hamilton, Mrs., 300. 

Hamlin, Hannibal, candidate 
for Vice-j)resident. 508; his 
election, 509. 

Hancock, John, quoted, 266; 
letter to, 272; also. 243, 248, 
266. 

Hancock, Winfield S., candi- 
date for President, 584. 

Hunna, Senator Marcus A,. 601. 

Hannibial, 68. 

Harald, King, 28. 33. 

61 



Harper's Ferry, midnight at- 
tack on, 505. 

Harris, Captain, 244. 

Harrison, Benjamin, quoted. 
266; his election as President, 
591; his administration, 592. 
593, 594; his second nomina- 
tion to the Presidency, 595. 

Harrison, General W. H., his 
victories in the Northwest. 
356; candidate for President. 
456, 46 J : his election and 
death, 462. 

Harrisse, H., 59. 

Hartford Conventiijn, the, 352. 

Hartop, Job, 101, 135. 

Harvard, Rev. John, tSA. 

Haven, S. F., quoted, 21. 

Hawkes, Henry, loi. 

Hawkins, Sir John, 84, 85, 86, 
87, 88, 94. 100, 101 , III. 

Hawthorne, N.. (|uoted. 184; 
also, 180, 3S0. 

Hay. Mrs., 376. 

Hay-Paunccfote treatv, 608. 

Hayes, Rutherford B., mem- 
ber of the House, 548; nomi- 
nated for President, 574; 
declared elected, 576; his 
administration, 578, 582. 

Hazard, Isaac Peace, 226. 

Hazard, Robert, 226. 

Heath, General Benjamin, 238. 

' ' Heimskringla . ' ' the . quoted . 
28. 

Helluland, 36, 47. 

Helper's, Hinton R., hnpeudiiiji 
Crisis. 509. 

Hendricks, Thomas A., 570. 

Henrietta Maria, Queen, 156. 

Henry, Miss, 403. 

Henry, Patrick, 221, 222, 287, 
291 . 

Henry IV. (of France), 120. 

Henry VI. (of England). 86. 

Henry VII. (of England) , 76, 7S. 
80, 83. 

lleriulf, 35. 36. 

Herrera, T. A., (juoted, 56, 57. 
58, 69. 

Higginson, Rev. Francis, quoted . 
T52, 153, 154. I'^o; ''il«'J. '•'^7- 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 



Hochelaga (Montreal), 107, loS. 
Hoist. Dr. Von, 287. 
Homer, 186, 188. 
Hood, General John B.. 529. 
Hooke, Rev. William, qtioted, 

208, 222. 
Hooker, "Fighting Joe." 526, 

528. 
Hooker, Rev. Thomas, quoted, 

213; also, 187. 
H6p, 38, 45- 
Hopkins, Stephen, 220. 
Hopkinson, Francis, 254. 
Horace, 186. 
Howe, Sir William, 242, 245, 

268, 269, 272. 
Howell, James, 45, 200. 
Howells, W. D., 332. 
Hubbard, Rev. William, 168. 
Hudson, Henry, 136, 143, 144. 
Huguenot colonies, French, 109, 

no, III, 112. 
Hull, Commodore Isaac, 377. 
Hull, General WilUam, 355. 
Hiilsemann letter, the, 484. 
Humboldt, Alexander von, 55, 

59- 
Humphreys, David, 378. 
Hundred Years' War, the, 160. 
Hutchinson, Governor Thomas. 

quoted, 152, 248. 
Hutchinson, Mrs. Anne, 191. 

Iceland, Northmen in, 35; vis- 
ited by Columbus, 51; also. 
47, 48, 49, 51. 

Ignorance of English officials, 
215. 

Illinois admitted as a State, 372 ; 
unsettled, 387, 396; settled, 

397- 

Independence, American, dawn- 
ing of, 232; war for, ibid.: 
early feeling about, 254, 255; 
second war for, 343. (Sec 
Revolutionary War.) 

Indian slavery, experiments in, 

435- 
Indiana admitted as a btate, 

372; unsettled, 396; settled, 

397. 
Indians, American, families of, 



4; mounds built by, 15: ill- 
treatment of, 1 06 ; their super- 
stitions, 124: warfare of, in- 
fluenced by English, 124, 125, 
165; found gentle by first 
explorers, 160; how treated 
by English, 161, 170; by 
' French and Spanish, 114, 174; 
purchases from, 161; senti- 
ments of Puritans towards. 
163, 167; influence of their 
warfare on that of the colo- 
nists, 165 ; how treated by the 
Dutch, 172; position of women 
among, 168; women at first re- 
spected by, 170; outbreak of, 
encouraged by the French, 
177; converted by Raslcf 179; 
their opinion of the colonists, 
181; later wars with, 313. 

Institutions, American, origin 
of, 206. 

Interglacial period, man in, 23. 

Internal improvements, 384, 
386, 390, 398, 401. 

International tribunals, 600. 

Intolerance in Maryland, 192; 
in Virginia, 195; in Massa- 
chusetts, 196. 

Iroquois Indians, 11, 12, 124, 
126, 175. (Sf'f? Indians.) 

Irving, Washington, 59, 380, 381. 

Isabella, Queen, 52, 59, 76. 

Italy, influence of, on American 
discovery, 74, 75. 

Jackson, Andrew, his charac- 
ter, 412, 413; causes of his 
popularity, 413; Webster's 
fears of, 414; popular views 
of, 415; early career of, 416- 
"reign" of, 417; first election 
of, 420; Jefferson's distrust 
of, 421; political changes 
made by, ibid.; Sullivan's 
opinion of, 422; inauguration 
of, 424; manners of, ibid.; 
his contest with Washington 
ladies, 426, 427; his dealing 
with nullification, 429; his 
re-election, 430; his contest 
with the United States Bank. 



620 



INDEX 



431. 443; also, 22S. 376, 450, 

455 

Jackson, Dr. W. H., 6. 

Jackson, Mrs. Helen, description 
of pueblo by, 8. 

Jackson, "Stonewall," 521; 
death of, 52ft 

James II., 176. 

Japanese and American flora, 
22 ; junks crossing the Pacific, 
21, 22. 

Jasper, Sergeant, 252. 

jay, Chief-justice John, treaty 
•^f. 3^3> 3^7' also, 310. 320, 
326, 329, 338, 344 

Jay, Mrs. John, 300 

Jefferson, Thomas, funeral of, 
224; his election as Vice- 
president, 319; his feeling as 
to the French Revolution ,321, 
322: his election as President, 
329; his inauguration, ibid.; 
attack on, in Portfolio, 330; 
charges against, ibid.; his 
housekeeping, 5^;^; his re- 
election, 338; his view of 
townships, 340; his character, 
341; his friendship with 
Adams, 342; his successors, 
343; his aversion to com- 
merce, 353. 

Jeffrey, Lord, 380. 

Jemison, Mary, 170. 

Jesuit missions, 113, 117, 119. 

Johnson, Andrew, appointed 
military governor, 520; his 
election as Vice-president, 
531; succeeds to Presidenc3^ 
:;46; his dispute with Con- 
gress, 549, 550, 552, 553, 
^54' 555- 5^^' impeachment 
"f. 557. 558; charges not 
sustained, '559; ceases to op- 
pose Congress, 560; un- 
popularity of, 561; successes 
in diplomacy of, 563. 

Johnson, Richard M., chosen 
by Senate as Vice-president, 

457- 
Johnson, William, 414. 
fohnston, General Joseph E., 

:;t5, '^27. =;2Q. 532, 535. 

6 



Johnston, Lady. (See Franks, 

Rebecca.) 
Jones, Captain Paul, 278. 
Juvenal, 186. 

Kalm, Peter, 216. 

Kansas, organized as a Territory, 
492, 493, 495; emigration trj. 
496; slavery riots in, 497; ad- 
mitted to the Union, 498, 511. 

Kansas-Nebraska act, 492, 493, 

494, 497- 499. 501- 
Karlsefne, ;i,8, 40. 
Kearney, General, 471. 
Kelley. William D., 548. 
Kendall, Amos, 431, 450. 
Kendall, John, 138. 
Kenton, Simon, 402. 
Kentucky, resolutions of 1799, 

328; admitted as a State, 337 ; 

early life in, 313. 402; oc- 
cupied by Union forces, 517. 
Kialamess, 38. 
Kieft, Governor Jacob, 157, 

172. 
King, Clarence, 395. 
King, Rufus, 293, 338, 362, 365. 
King, William R., his election 

as Vice-president, 491. 
"King Henry VI.," play of, 

quoted, 86. 
King Philip's War, 169. 
King William's War, 175. 
Kinglake, A. W., 244. 
King's arms, tearing down of, 

268. 
Kingsley, Charles, 89. 
Kinney, Mr., 50. 
Kirke, Colonel, 212. 
Klondike, discovery of gold in, 

608. 
"Know-Nothing" party, birth 

of, 500. 
Knox, General, letters from, 

285; also, 289, 298, 299, 3r4, 

3^9. 375- ^ 
Knox, Mrs. General, 297, 298, 

300, 309. 
Kohl, J. G., 75, 136. 
Kortwright, Miss, 375. 
Kossvith, 484, 485. 
Krossaness, 38. 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 



Krudencr, Baron, 427. 
Kuhn, Dr., 406. 
"Ku Klux act," 566. 
Ku Klux Klan, secret society, 
565- 

Lafayette, G. M. de (Mar- 
quis), 270, 274, 275, 322. 
La Hontan,. Baron, quoted, 163, 

175. 177- , , 

Landa, D. de, Maya alphabet of, 
17, 18. 

Lane, Joseph, candidate for 
Vice-president, 50S. 

Lane, Ralph, 130. 

Langbourne, Major, 230. 

Lapham, L A., cited, 23. 

La Roche, De, 113. 

La Salle, Robert C. de, 174. 

Las Casas, Bishop de, his pro- 
test against cruelty, 72; also, 

"5- 
Laudonniere, Rene de, 87, no. 

Lauzun, Due de, 277, 322. 

Lawrence, Captain James, 356. 

Lawyers, rise of, in the colonies, 
228. 

Laydon, John, 140. 

League of four colonies, 169. 

Le Caron, Pere, 115. 

Lee, Ann, 191. 

Lee, Colonel Robert E., at 
Harper's Ferry, 505; at Fair 
Oaks, 521; at Cold Harbor, 
528; surrender of, 532, 535. 

Lee, General Charles, 247. 

Lee, Richard Henry, 220, 255, 
256, 291 ; son of, 255. 

Lee family (Marblehead, Mass.), 
228. 

Leif the Lucky, ^7; his booths. 
38. 

Leifsbudir, 37. 

Leigh ton, Caroline C, 395. 

Leisler, Jacob, 214. 

Le Jeune, Pere, 117. 

Le Moyne, no, 112. 

Leon, Ponce de, his voyage, 68; 
also, 135. 

Lescarbot, 118. 

Leverett, Governor John, cour- 
ageous reply of, 210. 



Lewis, Meriwether, 334. 
Lewis, William B., 418. 
Lewis and Clark's expedition, 

II. 334- 

Liberator, the, 445, 450. 

Lincoln, Abraham, 312; his de- 
bate with Douglas, 505; can- 
didate for President, 508; his 
election, 509, 531; takes oath 
of office, 512; calls for volun- 
teers, 514; address at Gettys- 
burg, 527; discussed terms of 
peace, 532: death of, 533: 
granted amnesty, 542; vetoed , 
Wade-Davis bill, 544. 

Lincoln, Governor Levi, 425. 

Livingston, Cora, 404. 

Livingston, Edward, 429. 

Livingston, Robert R., 256, 263. 

294, 387- 
Livingston, the brothers, 220. 
Locke, John, his singular plan 

of government, 204. 
Lodge, H. C, quoted, 153. 
Lodge, Thomas, 84. 
Longfellow, H. W., quoted, 95; 

also, 226. 
Long Island, battle of. 271. 
Lorges, Roselly de, 61. 
Lossing, B. J., 358. 
Louis XV., 216. 

Louisburg, capture of, 180, 215. 
Louisiana, purchase of, 337, 

387 ; admitted as a State, 361 ; 

passed ordinance of secession. 

510; reconstructed, 543. 
Loundes, William J., 361. 
Lovejoy, Rev. Elijah P., 449. 
Lovewell, Captain John, 166. 
Lowell, John, 349, 352. 
Lubbock, Sir J., 23. 
Lundy, Benjamin, 445. 
Lundy's Lane, battle at. 359 
Lyoni General Nathaniel, 517. 

Macaulay, Lord, 194 
Macon, Nathaniel, 334. 
McDuffie, George, 405. 
McKean, Thomas, recollections 

of, 265 ; letter from, ibid.; also, 

266, 302. 
Madison, James, his election as 



INDEX 



President, 341; his appear- 
ance, 344; Federalist charges 
against, 351; his aversion to 
war. ibid.; close of his ad- 
ministration, 361. 
Madison, Mrs. James, 344, 346, 

375- 
Magellan, Ferdinand de, 68. 
Magnus, King, 34. 
Mail service, 384, 385. 
Maine, forts in, 177; Indian wars 

in, 179; admitted as a State, 

373- 

Maine, the, blown uj), 604. 

Maine Historical Societv, 47. 

Major, R. H., 75. 

Malbone, Godfrey, 228. 

Mammoth on ivory, 23. 

Man in interglacial period, 2^. 

Mandan Indians, ri, 15. 

Manhattan Island, 144, 162. 

Manila Bay, Spanish Hect de- 
stroyed in, 605. 

Manning, Cardinal, 1^3. 

Manufactures, introduction of, 
187. 

Maps (figured), Sigurd Stepha- 
nius's, 47:. Da Vinci's, 64: 
Schoner's (globe) , 65 : Cabot's, 
77; Drake's, 93; Urtelius's, 
104; Smith's, 136, 141. 

Marcldand, 36, 47. 

Marietta, O., 15. 

Marion, General Francis, 252. 

Marlborough, Duke of, 179. 

Marquette, Pere, 174. 

Marshall, Chief-justice John, 

414. 539- 

Marston, John, quoted, 137. 

Martin, John, 138, 140. 

Martyr, 'Peter. {See Anghiera.) 

Maryland founded, 155; re- 
ligious freedom in, 157, 192; 
intolerance in, 193; education 
in, 194; witchcraft in, 201; 
old institutions of, 207; man- 
ners in, 225. 

Mason, George, 276. 

Mason, Jeremiah, 420. 

Mason, J. M., 517. 518. 

Mason, Mr., 367. 

Mason, Senator, 479. 



Massachusetts, lurnicd by unioit 
with Plymouth, 205: inde- 
pendent spirit of, 210; charter 
of, vacated, 213; preparations 
for war in, 234; circular of, 
committee quoted, 238. 239; 
services of, in Revolution, 
2S0; Shays's insurrection in,- 
290; services of. in war of 
1812, 360. 

Massachusetts Bay Colon}-, 
founded, 151,152; relations of, 
with Indians, 161; toleration 
in, 189; education in, 193, 
194: intolerance in, 198. 

" Massachusettensis," 233. 

Massasoit, 164, 167. 

Masts sent by Massachusetts 
colony to England, 211. 

Matamoras, 468. 

Mather, Rev. Cotton, fictitious 
letter from, 199: quoted, 167, 
197, 202, 203; also, 187, 189, 
197. 

Mather, Rev. Increase, quoted, 
163. 212. 

Maximilian, Archduke, of Aus- 
tria. 563. 

May, Rev. Samuel J., 487. 

Mayas. 2, 4, 16, 18, 60; alphabet 
of, 18. 19; sculptures of, 20. 

Mayfloivcr. agreement on the, 
149. • 

McClellan, General George B . 

.=^15. 517. 521. 530. 531- 

McHenry, Jerry. 486, 487. 

McKinley, William, chairman 
of Ways and Means Com- 
mittee, 592; candidate for 
President, 601; his election, 
603, 609; his policy of ex- 
pansion, 606; his death, 610. 

McLane, John, candidate for 
President, 456. 

Meade, General, 526. 

Mechanic arts, introduction of. 
187. 

Medford, Mass., settkd, 153. 

Membertou, 119. 

Menendez, Pedro, 111. 

Mercator's charts, 54. 

Mercer. General, 313. 



62^ 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 



Mermaids, 54. 

Merrimac, the, 522, 523. 

Merry Mount, 154. 

Merry, Mr., 331, t,t,t,. 

Mexico, ancient, 9, 10, 13, 16; 
modem, 74: abolished slavery, 
458; war with United States, 

. 467-472; French in, 563. 

Miami Indians, the, 313. 

Michael, Emperor, 29. 

Michigan admitted as a State, 

Mills, Elijah H., 378. 
Milton, John, quoted, 102. 
Minnesota admitted to the 

Union, 504. 
Minuit, Peter, 144, 157, 162. 
Mississippi passed ordinance of 

secession, 510. 
Missouri admitted as a State, 

373; a slave State, 441. 
Missouri Compromise, 373, 441, 

459. 492, 493. 499. 501. 503- 

Mitchell, Professor Henry, cited, 
46. 

Mobile, Ala., settled, 174. 

Mohave Indians, 11. 

Molino del Rey, 472. 

Alonitor, the, 523. 

Monocrats, the, 315. 

Monroe doctrine, the, 382, 458. 

Monroe, James, called "James 
II." by Josiah Quincy, 343; 
elected President, 362 ; his rec- 
ord, 363; importance of his 
tour, ibid.; his fear of ex- 
tended territory, 366; his 
character and physique, 366, 
367; his travels, 367, 368; his 
policy, 371; his re-election all 
but unanimous, 373; Amer- 
ican literature born under 
him, 378; the Monroe doc- 
trine, 382; his views of the 
post-office, 384, 385. 

Monroe, Mrs. James, 375. 

Montcalm, General de, 182, 
183. 

Monterey, 471. 

Montezuma, 4, 10. 
Montezuma," a nicknaine for 
Washington, 318. 

6 



"Montezuma's Dinner," Mor- 
gan's essay on, 4. 

Montgomery, General James, 
251. 

Montreal captured, 182. 

Monts, Pierre de, 113, 134. 

Moon, Thomas, 90, 

Morgan, L. H., 10, 12, 16, 20, 21. 

Morrill, Justin S., 548. 

Morris, Gouverneur, 333, 401. 

Morris, Robert, 261. 

Morse, John T., Jr., quoted, 426. 

Morton, Mrs., 279, 311. 

Motte, Lieutenant-colonel, 252. 

Moultrie, General William, 252. 

Mound-builders, the, 2, 15; 
village of (figured), 14. 

Mount Desert first described, 
122. 

Mount Hope Bay, 45, 46, 47. 

Moustier, Comte de, 300. 

Movement of centre of popula- 
tion since 1790, 395. 

Mulhnger, J. B., 187. 

Murfreesborough, 521. 

Napoleon. (See Bonaparte.) 
Narrowing influence of colonial 

hfe, 189. 
Navarrete, M. F. de, 59. 
Navy, United States, battles of, 

278. 327. 339. 349. 355; first 
Secretary of, 327. 

Nebraska, organized as a Terri- 
tory, 491-493; no slavery in, 
495; admitted as a State, 554. 

Nechecolee Indians, 12. 

Negro suffrage, 543, 552, 554, 
561, 564, 567. 

Negroes, as soldiers, 523; as 
"freedmen," 545. 

Neill, E. D., 193. 

Neutral French, the, in Acadia, 
181. 

Neuville, M. Hyde de, 377. 

Neuville, Madame de, 377. 

Nevada organized as a Terri- 
tory, 511. 

New Amsterdam, founded, 144; 
nationalities in, 145. 

New England Antislavery So- 
ciety, 448. 

24 



INDEX 



New England EniigraiU Aid 

Society, 496. 
New England, first named. 137; 

colonies of, their influence on 

reviving Virginia colony, 151, 

152, 187, 
Newfoundland, origin of name 

of. 82. 
New France, Jesuits in. 113; 

also. 104, 174. 
New Hampshire, settled, 166. 

177; independence of. 205; 

buildings in. 223. 
Newhouse, Sewall. 3(^4 
New Jersey, settled, 144; inde- 
pendence of. 205; campaigns 

in, 272. 
New Mexico, pueblos of. 19; 

Indian inscriptions in, 43; 

ceded to United States, 473; 

organized as a Territory, 479. 
New Netherland, name changed, 

155; surrender to English, 173, 

204. 
New Orleans, battle of. 359, 

417. 
New Plymouth. (>cr Plym- 
outh.) 
Newport. Captain Christopher, 

138. 
Newport, R. I., old mill at. 41; 

French in. 277. 
New York (city), harbor of, 

136; first seat of government, 

296; society in, 297, 298; also, 

see New Amsterdam. 
New York, originally New 

Netherland. 144, 155, 158. 

173; governor of, quoted, 173; 

transferred to English, 204; 

revolt of, against Andros, 214; 

British army in, 250, 251; 

population of, in 181 7. 360. 
Nez Perce Indians, 1 1 . 
Nicaragua ship-canal, 59(1. 60S. 
Nicholls, Mr.. 80. 
Nichols, B. R., 388. 
NicoUs, Genei-al, 204. 
Nixon, John. 267. 
Nizza. Friar Marcos of, 9. 
North Carolina, colonized, (>5; 

divided from South Carolina, 



204; plans a fleet. 287; secedes 
from the Union, 516. 

North, Lord, 276. 

Northern colonies, condition of 
labor in, 229. 

Northmen, their lineage, 26; 
their habits, ibid.; their jew- 
elry. 27; their heroism, 28; 
their ships described, 30: 
dress of. 33, 34; precise topog- 
raphy of, unknown, 43; no 
authentic remains of, ibid. 

Northwest Territory, 293. 

Nova Scotia, Northmen in, 44. 

Noyes Academy "removed," 

449- 

Nunez, Alvar (Cabeja de Vaca) , 
his voyage, 69; also, 9, 174. 

Nunez, Vasco (Balboa) , his dis- 
covery of Pacific Ocean, 66. 

Oglethorpe, General James, 

218. 
Ohio Company, the, 293. 
Ohio, mounds of, 2, 15, 16, 19; 

admitted as a State, 337. 
Ohio River, early life on, 399. 
Old English seamen, the, 73. 
" Old French War," the. 181. 
Old mill at Newport, 41; the 

saiTie at Chesterton, England, 

42. 
O'Neil. Peggy. (See Eaton, 

Mrs.) 
Onondaga Indians. 15. (See 

Indians.) 
"Orders in Council," British, 

339. 347- 
Ordinance of 1787, 293. 
Oregon, boundary dispute, 469, 

470; organized as a Territory, 

474; joined the Union, 504. 
Ortelius, map of, 104. 
Osceola, 432. 

Ossoli, Margaret Fuller. 395. 
Otis. C. P., 121. 
Otis. H. G., 369. 
Otis, James, quoted. 215, 221, 

336. 
Otto. M.. 28s. ^^oo. 
Ovid, 1 88. 
Oxenstiern, Chancellor, 157. 



625 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 



Pacific cable, laying of, 607. 
Pacific Ocean, seen by Balboa, 

66; by Drake, 89. 
Page, John, 307. 
Paine, Robert Treat, 311, 327. 
Paine, Thomas, 259, 378. 
Palfrey, Dr. J. G., 42. 
Panama, 608. 
Parish, Rev. Daniel, 351. 
Parker, Captain, 236. 
Parker, Professor Joel, 230. 
Parkman, Francis, quoted, 113, 

117, 173, 190; cited. III, 118; 

not quite just to the Puritans, 

190. 
Parties, enmity between, 351, 

352; changes in, 360, 371; 

disappearance of, 418. 
Parton, James, 263, 267, 343. 
Pasqualigo, Lorenzo, 79. 
Peace of Paris, 160, 183; of 

Ryswick, 178; of Utrecht, 

179. 
Pendleton, George H., 562. 
Penn, William, his arrival, 205; 

his relations with the Indians, 

ibid.; also, 166, 205, 214. 
Pennsylvania, settlement of, 

205; relations of Delaware 

with, 205, 218; society in, 268, 

269, 309; campaigns in, 273, 

274; but one legislative body 

in, 286. 
Pennsylvania Society for the 

Abolition of Slavery, 438. 
Pentucket (Haverhill) attacked, 

178. 
People's party, the, 595. 
Pepperrell, Sir William, 180. 
Pequot War, the, 160, 168. 
Percy, Lord, 237, 238. 
Perez, Juan, 69. 
Perkins, J. H., 403. 
Perry, Commodore O". H., 356. 
Peter Martyr, 10, 56. 
Peter, Mrs., 357, 404. 
Peters, Dr., 196. 
Peters, John, 228. 
Petersburg carried by assaiilt. 

532. 
Peyster, Mr. De, 358. 
Philadelphia, the seat of gov- 

6 



ernment, 222, 308; life in, 

309, 310, 311; population ol, 

in 181 7, 360. 
Philip, King (Indian,), death of, 

170; also. 160, 162, 163, 168, 

171, 172, 175, 211. 
PhiUp II. of Spain, 84, 85, 87. 

88, 100. 
Philippine commission, 607. 
Phillips, Wendell, aids abolition 

cause, 449. 
Philoponus, 54. 
Phips, Sir William, 177, 180. 
Physique of Americans, change 

in, 219. 
Pickering, Timothy, 293. 349. 
Pierce, Franklin, his election as 

President, 491. 
Pierria, Albert de la, 109. 
Pilgrims (Plyfnouth), landing 

of, 151. 
"Pilgrims of St. Mary's." the, 

156. 
Pinckney, Charles C, 306, 327. 

.329. 3?>^, 34I- 

Pinkney, William, 354. 

Pioneers, early frontier, 402. 

Pitcaim, General, 235. 

Pitt, William, 182, 232, 21,^. 

Pizarro, Francisco, 67, 71. 

Plan of Iroquois house, 12, 14. 

Plastowe, Josias, 161. 

Piatt, Thomas C, 585. 

Phny, 186. 

Pkxtarch, 186. 

Plymouth colony, founded, 145; 
compact of, 149; relations of, 
with the Indians, 161, 167; tol- 
eration in, 189; merged in 
Massachusetts, 205. 

Pocahontas, 135. 

Point Comfort first named, 139. 

Polk, James K., his election as 
President, 465; and the war 
with Mexico, 468, 469; and 
the Oregon boundary dis 
pute, 470. 
j Polo, Marco, 52. 
1 Pont-Grav6, M. de, 121. 

Pontiac, conspiracy of, 183. 
: Poole, W. F., 200, 202. 
' Poor. General Enoch, 242. 

36 



INDEX 



Pophani colony, the, 134, 147. 

Popham, George, 134. 

Popham, Sir John, 134. 

Population, of colonies, 218; 
of New York in 1787, 296; 
Madison's prediction of, in 
the United States, 308; of 
cities in 1817, 369; increase 
of, in the United States, 386; 
advance of, 394, 395; of the 
United States in 1830, 432. 

Populist party, 601, 602. 

Port Bill, Boston, 221. 

Port Royal, N. S., taken, 177. 

Port Royal Harbor (S. C.) first 
described, 109. 

"Portia." (S^e Adams, Abigail.) 

Portugal and Spain, possessions 
of, in the New World, 73, 104. 

Pott, Dr., 195. 

Potter, Elisha, 405. 

Powhatan, 132, 135. 

Preble, Judge, 420. 

Prescott, General, 248. 

Prescott, W. H., 4, 4S3. 

Prideatix, General John. 183. 

Princeton, defeat of Cornwallis 
at, 272 

Pring, Martin. 133. 

Printz, John, 158. 

Protestant colonies, French, 109, 
110, III, 112. 

Provincial life introduced, 213, 
214. 

Ptol«Tiy, 63. 

Public men usually criticised 
with justice, 422 

Pueblos, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9, 12, 16, 19. 

Puerto Rico, 605. 

Pulaski, Count, 274. 

Puritans, numbers of, 155; sacri- 
fices of, 184; ballads concern- 
ing, 185; out-door life of, 186; 
social and educational charac- 
ter of, 186; amusements of, 
188; injustice done to, 190; 
proportion of educated men 
among, 195. 

Putnam", F. W., 5. 15. 

Putnam, General Israel, 241, 
249, 271. 

Putnam. General Rufus, 3()3 



Quakers, the, in Rhode island, 
192; in Maryland and Vir- 
ginia, 195: in Massachusetts, 
197; objections to, 197; de- 
fences of, 198; excesses of, 
ibid. 

Quebec, unsuccessful siege of, 
177; fall of, 183. 

"Queen Anne's War," 178. 

Quincy, Josiah (member of 
Congress), 299, 343, 346, 380. 

Quincy, Josiah (junior), rec- 
ollections of, 403, 425; also. 
404. 

Quincy, Mrs. Josiah (senior). 
224, 277, 279. 332, 345, 354. 
381. 

R.\ix, Professor, 26, 41. 42. 

44. 45- 46, 48. 
Ralegh, Sir Walter. 95, 9g. 101, 

102, 129, 130, 133. 134, 135, 

15.2. ISO- 
Raleigh, Va., 130. 
Ramusio, 105. 
Randolph. Edmund. 318. 
Randolph. Edward, 176, 211. 

215- 
Randolph, John, character of, 
377; quoted, 433; also. 2()9. 

323. 373, 376. ' 
Randolph, Miss, 377. 
Rask, Professor, 45. 
Rasle, Pere, 165, 179. 
Ratcliffe, John, 138, 140, 
Reconstruction acts, 551, 553. 

554, 555, 556, 557, S^y 
Reconstruction of Confederate 
States, 542, 543, 544, 545- 

546, 547- 

Reed, General Joseph, 252, 261. 
272. 

Reed, Thomas B., Speaker of thi- 
House, 594; his struggle for 
leadership, 601. 

Republican government, dis- 
trust of, 280, 336. 

Republican parly. {See Demo- 
cratic party.) 

Revere, Paul. 235. 

Revolutionary War. battles in 
at Lexington. 231;: of Con- 



627 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 



cord, ibid.; taking of Ticon- 
deroga, 240; of Bunker Hill, 
245; at Quebec, 251; defence 
of Fort Moultrie, 252; at Long 
Island, 271 ; at Fort Washing- 
ton, 272; at Trenton, ibid.; 
at Princeton, ibid.; Sit Brandy- 
wine, 274; at German town, 
ibid.; at Bennington, ibid.; 
at Saratoga, ibid.; at York- 
town, 278; campaigns of 
General Greene, 279; statis- 
tics of, 234, 272, 280, 281. 

Rhode Island, purchase of, 162; 
toleration in, 191; educa- 
tion in, 194; French army in, 
277. 

Ribaut, Jean, his landing, 109; 
also, no, III, 132, 204. 

Richmond, Duke of, 276. 

Richinond, the Confederate capi- 
tal, 515; abandoned by the 
Confederates, 532. 

Riedesel, Baroness, 228. 

Riedesel, General, 229. 

Right of search, British, 339, 

.347- 
Riots, slave, 448, 449; draft, 

530; negro, 553. 
Roads and canals, opening of, 

389. 397. 400, 401. 
Robinson, John, 146, 149. 
Robinson, Rowland, 227. 
Rochambeau, Comte de, 278, 

309- 

Rochester, N. Y., 394. 

Rodney, Ceesar, 261. 265. 

Rogers, Samuel, 59. 

Rolfe, John, 142. 

Roosevelt, Theodore, his elec- 
tion as Vice-president, 609; 
succeeds to Presidency, 610. 

Rosecrans, W. S., 527. 

Ross, General, 357, 358. 

Roxbury, Mass., settled, 153. 

Rule, Margaret, 203. 

Rupert, Prince, 245. 

Rush, Richard, 391, 420. 

Russell, Mrs. Jonathan, 377. 

Russia, Alaska purchased from, 

563- 
Rutledge, Edward, 256, 261. 

62 



Sac Indians, ii. 
Sackville, Lord, 591. 
Sagadahoc River (Kennebec), 

134. 
Saguenay, 107. 
St. Asaph's, Bishop of, 270. 
St. Augustine, Fla., iii. 
"St. Castin's War," 175. 
St. Clair, General, 313. 
St. John, Henry (Viscount Bol- 

ingbroke), 178. 
St. John's River explored, 109. 
St. Lawrence River explored by 

Cartier, 104, 107. 
St. Louis, Mo., 369. 
St. Simon's Island, Ga., i. 
Salem, Mass., settlement of, 

152; witchcraft at, 201; old 

usages of, 206. 
Sallust, 186. 
Sampson, Admiral, at Santiago, 

605. 
San Antonio, battle of, 472. 
San Domingo, 568. 
San Francisco, Cal., 93. 
San Jacinto, battle of, 459. 
Sanchez, Roderigo-, 58. 
Sanctuary, land of the, 157. 
Santander, Dr. Pedro, 114. 
Santiago, capture of, 605. 
Saratoga, N. Y., victory at, 274; 

surrender of Burgoyne at, 

ibid. 
Sardinian impressions of Colum- 
bus, 50. 
Sargasso Sea, the, 55. 
Sassafras, trade in, 133. 
Savannah, General Sherman at. 

529- 
Savonarola, Girolamo, 191. 
Scalps taken by English, 165. 
Schenectady, Indian massacre 

at, 177 ; also, 392. 
Schley, Rear-admiral, 608. 
Schofield, General J. M., 559. 
Schoner, Johann, globe of, 65. 
Schuyler, General Philip, 249. 
Schuyler mansion at Albany, 

228. 
Scientific surveys, 398. 
Scott, Dred, case of. 502, 503, 

504. 505- 



INDEX 



Scott, General Winfield, 429, 

464, 471. 491- 
Sea of Darkness, the, 53. 
Seamen, old English, 73. 
Secession, talk of, 505 ; Southern 

States pass ordinance of, 509, 

Second generation in America, 

the, 184. 
Sedgwick, Catharine, 335. 
Sedgwick, Mrs. Theodore, 309. 
Selectmen, origin of, 230. 
Seminole war, 432. 
Seven Bishops, the, 9. 
Seven Cities, the, 9, loi. 
Sewall, Samuel, his share in 

the witchcraft trials, 201. 
Seward, William H., 447, 481, 

532, 545, 560, 563. 
Seymour, Horatio, candidate 

for President, 562. 
Shakespeare, William, quoted, 

86, 102, 252. 
Shays, Daniel, 289, 317. 
Shepard, Rev. Thomas, 187. 
Sheridan, General Philip H., 

in Shenandoah Valley, 528, 

529- 
Sherman, General W. T., 521, 

527, 528, 529, 532, 548. 
Sherman, John, Secretary of 

the Treasury, 581. 
Sherman, Roger, 256, 263. 
Sherman act, 593, 596, 600. 
Sherwood, Grace, 201. 
Shirley, Governor, 180, 248. 
Sidney, Sir Phihp, 99. 
Silver, free coinage of, 597, 601. 
Simpson , Lieutenant J . H . , 2 , 5 , 

43- 

Skelton, Rev. John, 152, 187. 

Skraehngs, the, 38, 39; not 
Indians, 46. 

Slafter. E. F., 121, 124. 

Slave riots, 448, 449. 

Slavery first introduced at St. 
Augustine, in; in Virginia, 
136, 230; influence of, in 
Northern colonies, 226, 230; 
in southern colonies, 229; 
discussion of, 334. 37 2 > 433- 
434. 435. 436, 438, 439> 440, 

6 



442, 444, 445. 44^, 45 1. 455 ■■ 
458, 474. 492, 494, 495, 497, 
499, 510- 523, 524- 

Slaves, in Virginia, 435; in 
Carolina, ibid.; number of, in 
1 7 15, 436; treatment of, 437: 
fugitive, 486, 487, 488, 490, 
523. 

Slave-trade, the, 84, 86, 87: 
prohibited, 341; opposition 
to, 435; tolerated, 440; sup- 
pression of, 464, 479; African, 

.505- 

Slidell, John, 517, 518. 

Sloat, Commodore, 471. 

Smith, Buckingham, 71. 

Smith, Chief- justice and Mrs., 
279. 

Smith, Captain John, his ro- 
mantic spirit, 135; his de- 
scriptions, ibid.; his map, 136, 
137, 141; quoted, 131, 139, 
143, 163; cited, 132, 135. 137- 
146, 156, 162. 

Smith, Colonel, 235, 237. 

Smith, Gerrit, 487. 

Smith, Samuel H., 330. 

Smith, Sydney, 380, 430. 

Snorri, 40. 

Snorri Sturleson, 28. 

Society, American, manners in, 
296, 297, 301, 302, 332, 333, 
344-346, 375-377, 403. 404. 
426, 427. 

Soto, F. de, 70, 114, 174. 

South Carolina, separated from 
North Carolina, 204; old in- 
stitutions of, 207; State con- 
stitvition of, 281; nullification 
in, 429; passes ordinance of 
secession, 509. 

Southcote, Joanna, 191. 

Spain, exaggerations of chroni- 
clers of, 10; bigotry of, 114, 
115; "Requisitions" of, 114; 
cruelty of, 120; its policy in 
Cuba, 603 ; declaration of war 
with, 605. 

Spain and Portugal, possessions 
of, in the New World, 73, 
104. 

Spanish Armada, 100. 

29 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 



Sparke, John, 85. 
Sparks, Jared, 483. 
Spring Creek, Tcnn., 15. 
Squaw sachem, the, 168. 
Squier, E. G., 23. 
Stackelburg, Baron. 404. 
Stadacone (Quebec), 109. 
Stamp Act, the, 221. 
Standish, Miles, iso, i^i. 164, 

187, 189. 
Stanton, Edwin M., Secretary 

of War. 521, 555, 557. 558. 
Stark, General John, 274. 
■' Starving time, the," 142. 
State - rights doctrines, 304, 

361, 389- 
States, union of, 2S3. 
Steamboats, introduction of, 

400. 
Stephanius, Sigurd, 47. 
Stephens, Alexander H.. 478.; 

chosen vice-president of Con- 
federate States, 510. 
Stephens, J. L., 4. 12, 
Steuben, Baron, 274. 
Stevens, Thaddeus, 548. 
Stevenson, Adlai E., candidate 

for Vice-president, 609. 
Stevenson, Mary, 232. 
Stiles, Rev. Ezra, quoted, 222. 

292. 
Stockton, Chief-justice, 257. 
Stockton, Commodore, 471. 
Storrs, W. L., 405. 
Story. Judge Joseph, 353, 414. 
Story, Thomas, defends Quaker 

nakedness, 198. 
vStoughton. Lieutenant - go verti- 

Stowe's, Mrs., Uncle Tom's 

Cabin. 489. 
Strachey, William, 132. 
Stuyvesant, Peter, 203, 204. 
Succession, War of the Spani.sh, 
^ 178. 
Sttffrage. negro, 561, ^^2, 564. 

. 567. 

Sullivan. General, 251. 
Sullivan, William, cited. 299, 
330. ?,32>'< quoted. 302. 344, 
, 352. 359. 422. 
Sumner, Charles, 382. 499, 548. 



Sumner, Professor W. G., 228. 

418, 421, 432. 
Sumter, Fort, 510, 514. 
Swedish colony in Delaware, 

157, 162, 203. 
Sweinke, his defiance, 34. 
Swift, General Joseph G., 367. 

Tadoussac, early fur-trade at, 

113- 

Talleyrand-Perigord, Prince de, 
310, 326, 327. 

Taney, Chief-justice Roger B., 
431. 502, 503. 

Tariff, the, 334, 361, 371. 

Taylor, General Zachary, in 
command of forces in Texas, 
468, 471; his election as 
President, 475. 

Taylor, Jeremy, 208. 

Tecumseh, 356. 

Teller, Senator, 602. 

Temple, Sir John, 301. 

Tennessee, mounds of, 15, ad- 
mitted as a State, 337; emi- 
grants to, 395; secedes from 
Union, 516; reconstructed, 

543- 

Tennyson, Alfred, quoted, 122. 

Tenure of Office act, 554, 555. 
558, 568. 

Terence, 186, 188. 

Territorial slavery, 455. 

Territory, national, increase of, 
337. 365. 366. 

Texas, proposed annexation of, 
458; attempts to purchase, 
459; declared independent, 
ibid.; annexation of, defeated, 
460; Tyler favors annexa- 
tion of, 464; admitted as a 
State, 466, 467; boundary 
disputes, 468, 478; passes 
ordinance of secession, 510. 

Thacher, Oxenbridge, 220, 248. 

Thacher, Rev. Peter, bowling- 
alley of, 188. 

Thayer, Eli, 496. 

Thirkill, Launcelot, 81. 

Thirteenth Amendment, the, 

545. 548. 
Thomas, General, 241, 528 



630 



INDEX 



rhomas, Lorenzo, 55S. 

Thompson, John, 264. 

Thomson, Charles, 266. 

Thornton, Colonel Matthew, 
266. 

Thorwald, 37. 48. 

Thorwaldsen, A. B., 40. 

Thoughts on African Coloniza- 
tio n, Garr ison ' s , 447. 

Thury, Pere, 177. 

Ticknor, George, 258, 483. 

Ticonderoga, capture of, 183. 

Tilden, Samuel J., nominated 
for President, 574. 

Titles of the President, 302. 

Tobaceo, 143. 

Tompkins, Daniel D., 374. 

Toombs, Robert, 478. 

Torfffius, 41, 44, 47. 

■ Tory Row," Cambridge, Mass., 
22S. 

Town government, origin of. 230. 

Tracy, Senator, 309. 

Trades, introduction of. 187. 

Treat. Robert, 214. 

Treaty, of Ryswick. 178; of 
Utrecht, 179; of Paris, 279, 
605; Jay's, 317; with Tripoli. 
341: of Ghent, 359. 

Trenton, surprise of Hessians at, 
272. 

Triana. Rodrigo de. 59. 

Tripoli, treaty with, ^41. 

Trist, N. P., 430. 

Truxton, Commodore, 327. 

Tudor, William. 246. 

Tunnachemootoolt, village of, 
1 1 . 

Turner, J. M. W., 59. 

Turner, Nat. insurrection. 448. 

Tyler, John, candidate for Vice- 
president, 461; succeeds to 
Presidency. 462; his cabinet 
resigns, 463; favors annexa- 
tion of Texas, 464. 

Tylor. E. B., 13. 17. 

Tyrker. 37. 

Uncle Tom's Cabin, publication 
of, 489. 

Underground railroad," 487, 
488. 



Underbill, Captain John, 168. 

Union Pacific Railway com- 
pleted. 580. 

United States, iirst organized as 
a confederation, 284; becomes 
a nation, 291; western lands 
of. 293; inauguration of gov- 
ernment of, 294; social condi- 
tion of, 296; division of 
parties in. 304. 316. 328; 
appointment of officials in, 
306; adopts Washington as 
the seat of government. 308; 
early political violence in. 
314. .519. 335- 349: negotia- 
tions with France. 315, 318. 
326; its treaty with England. 
317; influence of French Rev- 
olution on. 320; great ex- 
tension of territory of, 337 
its war with England (18 12) 
347; era of good feeling in 
363; great western march of 
population of, 3S6; early 
maps of, 392; centre of 
poptilation of, 396; wars with 
Indian tribes of, 432: rise of 
antislavcry agitation in, ibid. 

Upham. C. W., 186. 

Usselinx, William, 157. 

Utah organized as a Territory, 

479- 
Utiea, N. Y.. 392. 
Uxmal, 12. 19. 

Valentine, Dr.. 17. 

Valley Forge, Revolutionary 
army at, 274. 

Van Buren, Martin. 378; his 
nomination as Minister to 
Gjeat Britain, 455; his elec- 
tion as President, 456; his 
administration. 457-460; his 
second nomination to the 
Presidency. 461. 474; op- 
posed to annexation of Texas, 

465- 
Van Rensselaer, Cathenne, 404. 
Varangian guard, the. 27. 
Varnhagen. F. A. de. 62. 
Vassall family. 226. 228. 
Vaughan , Mr. . 427. 



631 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 



Venezuela boundary dispute, 

599, 600. 
Vera Cruz, 471. 
Vergennes, M. de, 275, 285. 
Vermont admitted as a State, 

Verrazzano, 74, 83, 104, 105. 
Vespucci, Amerigo, new views 
concerning, 62; also, 66, 68, 

74, 78. 

Vicksburg, 521, 527. 

Vikings, visit of the, 25. 

Villegagnon, M. de, 109. 

Vinci, Leonardo da, 63. 

Vinland, 35, 40, 45, 47; not 
identified, 48. 

Virgil, 188. 

Virginia, settlement of, 130; 
starvation in, 142; young 
women emigrants to, 142; 
Indian massacres in, 167, 
170, 182; education in, 194; 
intolerance in, 195; witch- 
craft in, 201; its House of 
Burgesses, 229; resolutions of 
1798, 328; also, 435, 545, 547. 
516. 

Volney, C. F. C, Count de, 

311- 
Voltaire, F. M. A. de, 216. 
Von Hoist, Dr., 411, 417. 
Voyageurs, the French, 104, 

119, 127. 

Wade-Davis bill, 543. 544. 

Wadsworth, William, 212. 

Waldseemiiller, Martin, 63. 

Walker, Sir Hovenden, 179. 

Wamsutta, 168. 

War of 1812, opposition to, 
352-355; battles during, 356. 

War, the Hundred Years', 160; 
of the Spanish Succession, 
178; of the Austrian Succes- 
sion, 180; the Revolutionary 
(see Revolutionary War) ; of 
18 1 2 (see War of 18 12); the 
Seminole, 432. 

Warbeck, Perkin, 81. 

Ward, General A., 242. 

Wardwell, Lydia, 198. 

Warner, Seth, 241. 

63 



Warren, Dr. Joseph, 237-239. 
244, 248. 

Warren, General James, 335. 

Warren, Mrs. Mercy, her spicy 
correspondence with John 
Adams, 335, 336. 

Warville, Brissot de, 309. 

Washington, George, his early 
Western expedition, 181; his 
report on Indian outrages, 182 ; 
takes command of Continen- 
tal army, 246; his opinion of 
the army, ibid.; his views of 
disciphne, 249; forces evacua- 
tion of Boston, 250; rec- 
ognizes need of indepen- 
dence, 254; his promulgation 
of the Declaration of In- 
dependence, 270; his victories, 
272; his anxieties, ibid.; de- 
spondent at last, 276; his 
dancing at Newport, 278; 
orders cessation of hostilities, 
279; his distrust of the Con 
federation, 284, 2S8;his break- 
fast with Jefferson, 286; his 
release of prisoners from jail, 
290; letter of Knox to, quoted, 
ibid.; his inauguration as 
President, 294; his adminis- 
tration, 296; his receptions, 
301; his cabinet, 304; his re- 
election, 312; abuse of him, 
318, 319; letter of Jefferson to , 
342; his Farewell Address. 
351; proposes canals, 401. 

Washington, Mrs. George, 298, 
301, 312. 

Washington City, adopted as 
the seat of government, 308; 
British capture of, 357; so- 
ciety in, 301, 302, 5^7,, 344. 
34.=;. 346, 374, 376, 377- 403. 
404. 427; inhabitants of, 378. 
404. 

Watertown, Mass., settled, 153. 

Wayne, Anthony, 313. 

Weaver, James B., candidate 
for the Presidency, 596. 

Webb, Dr. T. A., 41, 42. 

Webster, Daniel, quoted, 263. 
414, 424; also, 258, 263, 354, 



INDEX 



378, 382, 403, 408, 419, 421, 
456, 463, 480, 483, 484. 

Webster, Ezekiel, 419. 

Webster, Mrs. Daniel, 403. 

Weetamo, 168. 

Welch, Dr., 237. 

Welde, Rev. Thomas, 186. 

Wellington, Duke of, 377. 

Wentworth house in Ports- 
mouth. N. H., 228. 

West, Captain, 162. 

West Virginia admitted into 
the Union, 525. 

Western States, early condition 
of, 387, 392 ; change in, 

392- 
Wheatley. Phillis, 311. 
Wheeler, William A., candidate 

for Vice-president, 574. 575; 

declared elected, 576. 
Wheeling, Va., 394. 
Whiskey Insurrection, 316. 
White, 'Father, 156. 
White, Hugh L., candidate 

for President, 456. 
White, John, 130, 131. 
White, Mrs. Florida, 404. 
White House, early life in, 325, 

33.1' 345. 405. 406. 

White Man's Land, 40. 

Whitney, Eli, inventor of the 
cotton-gin, 439. 

Whitney, Professor ]. D., 24. 

Whittier, J. G,, i98.\-?8o, 3S1. 

Wilkes, Captain, 518. 

Wilkinson, Jemima, 191. 

William, King, 176, 214. 

Williams, Rev. John, 178. 

Williams, Roger, banishment 
of, 154; purchase of Rhode 
Island by, 162; toleration of, 
190; quoted, 191; also, 187, 
195- 



Wilmot, David, 473. 

" Wilmot Proviso," ihe, 473. 
474, 480. 

Wilson, Deborah, 198. 

Wilson, James, 256. 

Wilson's Creek, 517. 

Wingate, Paine, 2257- 

Wingfield, E. M., 138. 

Winslow, Josiah, quoted, 167; 
also, 162, 168, 1S7. 

Winsor, J., Narrative and Crit- 
ical History of America. 
quoted, 144. 

Winthrop, Governor John (of 
Connecticut), 177. 

Winthrop, Governor John (of 
Massachusetts), arrival of, 153; 
journal of, cited, 201 ; also, 185, 
187, 189. 

Winthrop, Hannah, 235. 

Wirt, Mrs. William, 403. 

Wirt, William, 430. 

Witchcraft in Europe, 199; 
in Connecticut, 201 ; in Mary- 
land, Virginia, New York. 
Massachusetts, 201. 

Witherspoon, Dr., 257. 

Wolcott, Mrs. Oliver, 309. 

Wolcott, Oliver. 301, 315. 

Wolfe, General James, 183. ■ 

Wood's Holl, 4S- 

Wright, Colonel C. D., 187. 

Wyatt, Rev. Hant, 195 

Wythe, George, 220. 

X, Y, Z CORRESPONDENCE, ^2b. 

Yeomen of New England de- 
scribed, 229. 
Yucatan, 2, 5, 17, 20. 

ZuAzo, 10. 

Zubly, Rev. J. J,, 280. 



THE END 



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